Love is kind
KINDNESS IS love in action. If patience is how love reacts in order to minimise a negative circumstance, kindness is how love acts to maximise a positive circumstance. Patience avoids a problem, kindness creates a blessing. One is preventative, the other proactive. Welcome to week three of Flair’s Love
Corner where we explore these aspects of love which are the cornerstones on which many of the other attributes we will discuss are built.
BEING LIKEABLE
Love makes you kind, and kindness makes you likable. When you are kind, people want to be around you. They see you as being good to and for them.
Kind people simply find favour wherever they go. Even at home. But kindness can feel a little generic when you try defining it, much less living it. So let’s break kindness down into four basic core ingredients.
Gentleness: When you are operating from kindness, you are careful how you treat your spouse and friends, never being unnecessarily harsh. You are sensitive and tender. Even if you need to say harsh things, you will try to make your rebuttal or challenge as easy to hear as possible. You speak the truth in love.
Helpfulness: Being kind means you meet the needs of the moment. If it’s chores, you get busy. A listening ear – you give it. Kindness graces a wife with the ability to serve her husband without worrying about her rights. Kindness makes a husband curious to discover what his wife needs, then motivates him to be the one who steps up and ensures that these needs are met – even if his are put on hold.
Willingness: Kindness inspires you to be agreeable. Instead of being obstinate, reluctant, or stubborn, you cooperate, you stay flexible. Rather than complaining and making excuses, you look for reasons to compromise and accommodate. A kind husband ends thousands of potential arguments by his willingness to listen first rather than demand his way.
Initiative: Kindness thinks ahead, and then takes the first step. It doesn’t sit around waiting to be prompted or coerced to get off the couch. The kind spouse will be the one who greets first, smiles first, serves first, and forgives first. They don’t require the other to get his or her act together before showing love. When acting from kindness, you see the need, and then make your move.
How can you learn to love until you learn to demonstrate kindness?