True kindness tends to come from Strength. Otherwise it can come from victimization so it is coming from a different place than true kindness. Understanding this is important I think.
My wife often says to me, "You are the kindest man I have ever met." What am I to do with this?
Am I to believe this or what?
Maybe what is important here is that she believes it because it makes her feel safe like I'm her knight in shining armor.
When did I know I was a kind person?
I think it dawned on my when I was listening to a little friend my age (I was always big for my age) and he was sort of whining that he was poor and he didn't have a bicycle and his mother saw all sorts of men and he didn't have a Dad and his mother didn't have a car and didn't drive.
Being the totally naive 8 year old I was I said to him, "I have a bicycle, my Dad has a car, I have both my Dad and my Mom with me and also one of my grandmothers living with us. We travel on weekends and go on vacations once a year too.
At this point he started punching me and I realized I should have thought more about how upset he was about what he was telling me. But, because I was a head taller than him I didn't punch him back but only blocked his blows. I was laying on my back with him trying to punch me with him sitting on my chest when my Dad drove up in our car and this chased the boy away.
My Dad asked me why I wasn't hitting him back. I told my Dad that I felt sorry for this boy and said he was too little to really hurt me. I didn't have the heart to punch him and knock him out just for being hysterical about not having a Dad, a car or a bicycle or that he never went on vacations or anywhere on the weekends.
This sort of was when my Dad started to realize that I was a very old soul. This is likely when I realized I was a very kind person too.
Later in life people might try to punch me and they would sprain or break their hands with little or no damage to me because I was always solid. Sometimes people would run into me and just fall down. In High School they wanted me to be a football lineman but I wasn't interested because I had already seen what had happened to our Class president who got canned as a quarterback and had to walk with a cane ever after at age 16. So, I wasn't interested in being injured either. I worked during high school after school and bought my first car the month after I turned 16 and started dating a girl who was 21 in my church when we went to a drive-in theater.
So, kindness came through strength for me not weakness. But, that didn't mean my life has been easy. It just means that when I have a choice I am kind. I'm only scary when I have to be and have no other better choice available.
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