Beware Of The Impact Of Kindness

An act of kindness is universally respected as a good deed. Every religion teaches us to be kind and helpful. We praise generosity and we elevate compassionate people to a God-like status. Then, why did I warn you to be wary of the result of kindness?
Let me tell you a story to explain the statement.

There once was a village of wealthy and prosperous people. All the people of this village were blessed with good health, wealth and abundance. The villagers were grateful for their fortune, they shared it freely with those who were less fortunate. Once a sickly poor mendicant came to their village asking for charity. Everybody donated freely to help the poor man. Soon, with all their kindness, the beggar’s health improved. He was able to save enough money to stop begging. He took up a job in the village. Seeing his development, more beggars started to visit this village. The kind citizens continued to help everyone who came. But some of the villagers observed the sudden increase of beggars, they stopped being so generous. Soon, the rest of the families too started to make the same observation and stopped giving alms as freely as before.

The new beggars did not like this change. They started to demand charity, instead of requesting it. If anyone refused to help, they would get agitated at them. As the situation worsened, more and more families stopped helping. This made the beggars riotous.

Observing all these changes, the village elders and the chief called for a meeting. They wanted to settle this conflict, so they sat down to discuss the concerns. Through this discussion, the chief realized that the whole ruckus was a result of their own kindness.

The villagers were kind to everyone who asked for help, they never checked if the person deserved help or not. They blindly served everyone who asked. Their unquestioning attitude and kindness attracted all the freeloaders and lazy people around. The village became a haven for lazy and good for nothing people. Their begging was no longer a request for help, it became a demand for money. Later, it became the responsibility of the villagers to feed this bunch of beggars.

If you think that this is just another imaginary story, then think again. Transpose this story onto your life and analyse. Often, we try to be helpful to friends or family just because they are our friends or family. We go out of the way to help them, but our friends take the help for granted. God forbid, if we refuse to help them for any reason, they start to get agitated and emotionally blackmail us. They make statements like, ‘how can you be so cold-hearted?’ or ‘is our friendship not worth the trouble?’ They guilt-trip us into going beyond our limits to help them.

It is not just with our friends and family, we see this trend even with certain charitable and social organisations. They make us feel guilty for our well being and use this guilt to manipulate us into donating more than we can afford.

I will not persuade anyone against compassion. In fact, the world could use more kindness, but beware of whom you shower it upon. Not everyone who asks for help deserves it. Do not fall prey to false propaganda and manipulative lies. Stop and check the veracity of any problem before you start to help them.