Apparently a hospital experimented with the idea of getting kind-hearted chaplains to inform terminally ill patients that they’re going to die, instead of the doctors, because patients found some doctors unkind and too direct when breaking tragic news. One priest broke the bad news to an elderly woman that she only had 48 hours to live as follows: “Mrs Jones, the results of your tests are in; so I just want to ask you, do you still like bananas?”
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mrs Jones replied “Oh Father! You know I love bananas!” The priest replied “Then if I was you, I wouldn’t waste my money buying any green ones.” Nice effort given doctors’ love of fruit.
Whenever I’ve asked young couples getting married what they like about their fiancée, all sorts of traits get mentioned. Yet, it appears the number one most valued trait in a spouse is “kindness”. So many couples have said this that you would almost swear they’d been copying each other’s answers.
And it’s a good answer for a fiancée because kind people are the easiest people in the world to live with.
RELATED
So what is kindness, and how do we get it? Well, kindness is a virtue, and so like any habit you can only get it by exercising it as often as you can. To whom we exercise our kindness towards is critical to the growth of our kindness.
If most of us ever met a real-life James Bond I don’t think he’d be very kind to us. He only ever saves people who are young, beautiful, and female. If you’ve seen one Bond movie you’ve seen them all: boy gets girl, boy gets another girl, boy gets caught by the bad guys and tied up, boy escapes and, rather than tie-up he kills the bad guys (if they’re so bad, how come they only ever tie him up?), boy saves the entire world, boy gets back the second girl and they live happily ever after, until the next “Bond girl” arrives in the next movie.
Why is James Bond fiction? Because a man who is generous enough to lay his life on the line constantly for others is unlikely to spend every other waking hour selfishly “hitting on chicks”, and a man who is constantly “hitting on chicks” is unlikely to have either the aptitude or even the desire to save the world.
Seriously, if we only give our kindness to those who can give us something back, then we’re not really building up our kindness.
It is especially in kindness towards the sick and the weak that we experience true growth in this virtue. If you want to get better at tennis you play someone you find difficult to beat. If you want to get better at kindness, be kind to difficult people but especially those you live with when they are being difficult. They won’t stay difficult for long and neither will you.
