Who is “Deserving” of Kindness?

To a truly kind person, this is a meaningless question. Kindness comes from within your own heart; it’s something that you could not hold back if you wanted to. This is like asking, “Who is deserving of being seen by my eyes?” Your eyes see what they see. Your heart feels what it feels. You do what you do.

Every living being is deserving of kindness. More precisely, every living being can be an object for your empathy. Every living being has the same core experience; trying to stay alive, and trying to avoid death. Even a tree grows roots to get nourishment from the soil! Every living thing seeks life and avoids death. When you strip away all the details that come with the “complexity” of human life, you end up with this very simple core experience.

Everything a person does is an attempt to further those ends; extending life, delaying death. Even reproduction extends life and delays death! A child is an extension of our one’s own life. 

I may die in 50 years, but my seed (a part of my physical body) lives on, in the form of my progeny. In that sense, I will not die until all of my bloodline runs out. This is a very deep instinct that runs back through the millions of years of our evolution, all the way back to the first single-celled organism that extended its life by splitting itself into two organisms. It’s pretty trippy when you realize that our original ancestor, that crazy little single-celled organism, is still alive today in the form of all life on this planet (including you and me).

Every living being is deserving of your kindness. We are all part of the same compost heap. We’re all headed toward a final end, and we’re all afraid to lose this beautiful thing we have called “consciousness.” Life is short – for you, for me, and for the ants in my backyard. Let’s make it good for everyone.