True kindness

I discussed recently that I was taught as a child the forms of courtesy but didn't have its heart which is respect for one's own honor and therefore for others'. I behaved politely and agonized over my lapses because it was about my performance. Now I am more respectful of myself and able to be genuinely respectful and focused on others. What made the change and why? What changes self-absorbed people who are all about themselves into kind people whose life is for them but not all about them? Suffering under God's kind hand.

"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore...
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say,
"It is I you have been looking for."
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.


Here is God's kindness to us in a poem by Mpho and Desmond Tutu from the book Made for Goodness.

"Do you think I don't know the demands of your life?...
Do you imagine that I did not know who you were when I made you,
when I knit you together in your mother's womb?
Do you think I planted a fig tree and expected roses to bloom?
No, child, I sowed what I wanted to reap."


This is my why.