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or are they really. it used to be the only time i was kind to anyone, was when i thought i could get something from them. for me acts of kindness were just another manner of manipulating someone into doing something sooner or later that i wanted. or perhaps i was trying to get someone to see me as better as i was. either way there was no purity in my motives.
so the reading suggests that i do acts of kindness for yet another motive, to make the world a better place through the radiation of my kind act rippling through the world around me. i can affect change in the livability of the world around me just by being kind. it still seems to me that this is a selfish motive, making my life better, by making the world a better place to live. . that my actions effect change on such a global scale is a difficult concept to swallow at first glance, i do however remember that my actions when acting-out of my active disease did make a negative impact on the world around me.
i have a bit of a problem with this on one level. i have been taught to act out of selfless motives and that being kind is its own reward. so when the reading suggests that i be kind to make the world a better place for everyone, including myself, that i am not acting out of manipulative self-interest. i guess that making the world a better place is not a bad motive and the means for doing so is to be kind to those i happen to interact with across the course of my daily life -- so perhaps the ends do justify the means in this case. and honestly being kind for any reason is probably not a bad manner of living. so i will ponder my actions and motives over the course of my day and see what comes about.
∞ DT ∞