"Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle"
Life is hard. Yet many times we tend to forget that life is also hard for others. If you look on social media most of the posts from your friends are happy pictures, inspirational quotes, and links to how others have overcome hardships. However, we rarely think that our friends may be the ones that are suffering just like the blog posts that we read.
On Wednesday night, while traveling to California with my sister, we talked about many things. One of the things that came up was how many people, parents of families that we have known since childhood, got divorced last year. She also talked about many of her friends that were getting divorced because of their husbands addiction to pornography. While talking about these things it just hit home how real the hardships of life really are, and how it can happen to all of us. Hence the quote above, "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." We never know, whether it be our friends or just a random person driving alongside us on the freeway, what those around us are going through. If we could just be kind to all those we come in contact with we would find greater happiness and peace with ourselves and spread love to others at an amazing rate.
What tends to be harder is to be kind when we are going through hard times. Yet another quote comes to mind for this as well, "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
Do we really think that it is always possible to be kind? What about the times that we are having the roughest day ever, and then someone decides to be mean to us? Is it just to be kind to them as well? Yes. In fact, it may be that the other is just being mean because they too are having a bad day. Though this is a hard concept to enact, this is something that I wish to do every day, think of ways to be kind to others whenever possible, so that I may be the means by which others can be made happy.
If we wish to help others we must show them that we care, and to end I wish to repeat the words of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Love is spelt T.I.M.E."
Interesting thoughts! One step further- what does it mean to be kind? Like many people, I frequently confuse kindness with niceness, and end up doing more damage than good. Kindness is often harsh but necessary and loving. The Savior never encouraged us to be nice, and He was often harsh toward the people who He interacted with. He did, however, command us to be kind.
ReplyDelete