Kindness with edges
There was a time when being kind didn’t require an explanation.
You could encourage someone without wondering what they thought you wanted.
You could be happy for someone without worrying that your enthusiasm looked excessive.
You could say something genuinely kind and simply mean it.
But somewhere along the way, we became suspicious of kindness.
We started looking for the motive behind the gesture.
Why are they being so nice?
What do they want?
Is this genuine?
And honestly, I understand the suspicion.
People can be complicated.
Not every kindness is selfless.
Not every smile is warmth.
Sometimes there is something underneath the surface.
But I wonder what happens when we’ve become so accustomed to looking for the hidden motive that we no longer know what to do with someone who simply means what they say.
Someone who cheers for you because they’re happy for you.
Someone who encourages you without keeping score.
Someone who sees something good in you and says so.
Someone whose warmth isn’t a strategy.
And perhaps the strangest part is what happens to that person after enough doubt.
They start questioning themselves.
Am I too much?
Do I need to be more guarded?
Should I stop being so enthusiastic?
Maybe people won’t take me seriously if I’m always warm.
So they begin editing themselves.
A little less excitement.
A little more distance.
A little more suspicion.
A little less of the part of themselves that used to come naturally.
But maybe the answer isn’t to become colder.
Maybe it is to learn that warmth and boundaries can exist in the same person.
You can be generous without being endlessly available.
You can be soft without being easily moved.
You can forgive without forgetting.
You can love people and still tell them no.
You can smile and still mean it when you say, this doesn’t work for me.
And perhaps being firm doesn’t always have to look like becoming someone else.
Maybe sometimes it simply means allowing your kindness to have edges.
Because kindness without boundaries can become exhaustion.
But boundaries without kindness can become armour.
Perhaps the work is not choosing between the two.
Perhaps it is learning to hold both.
And maybe, if your natural instinct is warmth, you don’t have to apologise for that just because the world has taught you to be suspicious of it.
You don’t have to make yourself harder to prove that you’re real.
You don’t have to become distant so that your kindness feels more believable.
You can be exactly as sincere as you are.
Just with a little more room for the word no.
And perhaps that’s not becoming less kind.
Perhaps that’s becoming more whole.
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