I believe kindness is essential to have happiness. I believe this because kindness has given me happiness.
I have a friend that taught me to be kind, and I will never forget it! Sally was my roommate for almost 1 year about 2 and half years ago. One day, after a long day at work, and me being very unhappy, I walked into our kitchen. She was cooking a meal looking sad. Since this was an un-usual behavior, I asked her what was wrong. She replied, “I don’t understand why people have to be so rude”. I asked her what had happened, and she told me the story that she has always tried so hard her whole life to be kind to everyone she met, weather they were kind to her or not. She said that she was at the store and some woman, (not paying any attention to what she was doing) bumped into her with her cart. Sally quickly said she was sorry, and the woman rolled her eyes, and walked away. Even though this gesture was not the end of the world, it really bothered Sally. She continued to tell me that if the situation had been reversed, she would have smiled, and said sorry. She would have been kind to her; because that is the way, she likes to be treated.
It made me sit back and think. I am not very kind to people that I do not know, or people that look different from me, so on and so forth. How pathetic is that? If something, so small can hurt someone’s feelings, such as a dirty look at the grocery store, then what kind of impact do I have on people’s lives when I have intentionally said something hurtful that was not kind at all?
Learning the lesson that kindness is essential to have happiness has been the best lesson I could have learned. You would think this is a lesson that should be learned as a young child. Here I am at 23, nearing 24, and only now, I can say that I believe that it is essential to be kind to feel the full effects of happiness in life. Now I know why Sally has so much happiness in her life, and why she gets sad when the smallest rude gesture puts a dark raincloud over her sky. (Only for a little moment though, because she is too happy to let it bother her for the whole day)