X4vier

silentbob's post "Failures in Kindness" is excellent. I love the idea that sometimes, when we exaimine a situation in depth, the most "kind" course of action can be highly conterintuitive. A few other examples I'd like to offer: Appreciative Kindness Imagine you meet a friend-of-a-friend for the first time while attending a gathering at their home. "Hey, welcome! It's great to meet you - can I get you anything?" they ask. There's nothing you really want right now, and you don't want to take from them or cause inconvienience, so you say "I'm fine, thanks." Some people might assume declining their offer is kind. After all, wouldn't it be inconsiderate to make them go to the effort to proivde you with something you don't even really want? But declining in this way will likely be percieved as a minor rejection. From the other person's perspective, they can't know the difference between: 1. In all sincerity, you are totally comfortable already and there's nothing they can do for you right now. 2. There is something they could give you which you would enjoy, but you won't accept it becuase you don't want to initiate the early stages of a recipriocal relationship with them. The geniunely kind thing to do in this case is to accept some kind of token gesture and show lots of grattitude for it. Even if you're not thirsty, ask for a cold glass of water and say "thanks so much!" with a smile. This scales up to larger favours too. If a friend offers to spend their Saturday helping you move house - rejecting this due to feelings of guilt about taking too much from them, or anxiety about being endebted to them, can feel kind, but probably isn't. Most people we regularly interact with suffer little from material scarcity, but far too often suffer from a lack of feeling valued+appreciated+connected to others. So when someone offers a gift, the maximally kind option is almost always to enthusiastically accept it with exuberant grattitude. Assertive Kindness Say you're h