Have you seen the news lately?
How many articles have you read where you felt: “while this earth is a big mess”? What is going on? Things seem to get worse.
I have felt lately that, even though I need to be informed about what is going on around me, watching the news and sometimes being on social media can instigate fear and worry in my heart. Also it seems like there is more hate and anger out there than love and empathy.
This is why it is important for me to write this post.
No, I am not going to advocate any political positions or spread my opinions. I want to go back to a simple, basic step on how to react towards all that is happening.
Be kind.
Amid all the negativity, we can push out positivity.
I know this may sound cliché, especially coming from a Christian perspective, but I think it is one of the solutions available out there. It starts with empathy.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Understand
Firstly, let’s remember that life in general is hard, and we all go through difficult times and we all struggle. All our lives are imperfect, going up and down, mixing beauty and pain. Secondly, we could all have at some times been mocked, bullied, vilified, discriminated against, attacked because of how we look, what we wear, our lifestyles, our beliefs, our ethnicity, or else. Empathy is just putting oneself in someone else’s shoes and, in a sense, sharing their life.
Share
You can never know about a person’s life just from meeting them once. We should probably listen to others as much as we talk to them or about them. In a world where everyone wants to voice their opinions, it is so easy to disregard others’ feelings because we see our own feelings more often. As they share their stories, we can give a piece of our heart rather than a piece of our mind.
The simple things
You probably heard it or done it before:
We can all do little things, from keeping company with people who are alone to befriending older people in a nursing home, to volunteering at a shelter, and donating to charities. But we can also do the little things like being polite, smiling, complimenting and encouraging people instead of criticising them.
I know it sounds pretty basic, and we have all heard it all before, but it looks like a foreign thing these days. I remember hearing last week that someone told me that just because she was kind to someone, people assumed she was flirting with them. Why is being kind now associated with suspicious motives or a hidden agenda? Let’s flip this script and treat others the way we want to be treated.
The world can easily make us harder. Let’s not give in to the negativity
Let’s be kind…the world needs it.
