Kindness

I didn't believe in kindness.

In this age where wit is almost always equal to sarcasm, and cynicism is the way to survival, kindness just seems like an unpopular way of being. I don't think I've been a kind person. I know I'm not a very good person, and kindness isn't a trait I'm usually associated with. I don't see a lot of kindness in my day-to-day life, which is sad, but I'd like to think that that's because it's just simply rare. People don't do kindness anymore. They'd rather be anything but kind. Kind is boring.

I don't know what to do with kindness.

I'm so used to the fact that no one bothers with being kind anymore, and since unkindness (if that's even a word) is contagious, I tend to think that it doesn't exist anymore.

But it does. 

Someone could be so kind to you, even though you don't think you've done anything good enough to deserve it.

Someone could shower you with so much kindness that you don't know what to do with it.

A Little Life's Jude St. Francis didn't know what to do with Harold's genuine kindness. He's not used to it. He's unfamiliar with it, and it feels alien to him. He thought such kindness is unnecessary; soon Harold is going to find out that he's not worth all the kindness, the love, the affection that Harold offered him. Soon, something will go wrong, and he's afraid that he won't be ready when that happens if he enjoys this happiness; the happiness of being the object of someone's kindness. But Harold loved him anyway. In spite of all the danger. In spite of every thing that happened. 

I hope one day you'd find a kind person--a genuinely kind person. Someone who's kind to you. Someone who sees your worth, even when you couldn't see it; when you didn't know you had any. I hope this kind person will be kind to you just because they want to. Because they know that you could do with some kindness. That you deserve it. That you're not as bad as you think you are--not even half of it. I hope that what they do to you will make you realise that you are capable of something. Their kindness will lift you up. Nurture you. Help you to be the best person you could be. I hope that this person will awaken something in you that have been asleep and hiding in the deepest, darkest corner of you--and stick a candle to it.

And that someday, you will grow to be the kind person that you wish you'd met.