The fourth in a series on Being Kind, Always on My Take By Tamara.com.

I thought it was important to clarify just what being kind means. I want to be sure that my efforts are hitting the mark, that I wasn’t considering an action to be kind if it truly wasn’t.

Dictionary.com defines kind this way: 1) of a good or benevolent nature or disposition, as a person: “a kind and loving person;” 2) having, showing, or proceeding from benevolence: “kind words;” 3) indulgent, considerate or helpful; humane (often followed by to): “to be kind to animals.”

I love the broad scope for what is considered to be kind. (I also love that the concept of kindness to animals is exemplified in so authoritative a document as the dictionary.)

Looking at the synonyms for kind from Thesaurus.com, the broad scope of being kind becomes even more evident: affectionate, amiable, charitable, compassionate, considerate, cordial, courteous, friendly, gentle, gracious, humane, kindhearted, kindly, loving, sympathetic, thoughtful, tolerant.

Great words. Great actions. It’s good to know that the universe, or at least the dictionary and thesaurus folks, clearly wants to help us be kind by providing a wide range of actions that ARE considered kind.

For the most part, being kind and thoughtful comes to me instinctively, naturally. But when I’m anxious, annoyed or aggravated, which has happened a lot more over the last year thanks to that disturbance in the force I’m dealing with, being kind is not my first instinct. More like a second instinct, or even third or fourth depending on the level of said anxiety, annoyance or aggravation.

While I am capable of being kind at those times (read about my experience with the furniture saleswoman), more often I fail – as in Sunday’s chat with a customer service rep from my bank. I ended up being rude because I was frustrated and annoyed at the manual nature of the transaction I was trying to complete, one that is normally automated, at least in my experience with other banks. It wasn’t the service rep’s fault yet I took it out on him with a snippy, sarcastic tone and a peremptory hangup.

Being rude is not being kind. In fact, rude is on the list of antonyms for being kind and it’s with THIS list that I can get into a bit of trouble. In this list we see the difficulties in our efforts to be kind always: aloof, antagonistic, cold, cool, disagreeable, discourteous, hard, harsh, inattentive, inconsiderate, indifferent, mean, nasty, rough, rude, thoughtless, uncaring, uncompassionate, unfeeling, unfriendly, etc.

Also a broad scope of words and actions for the opposite of kind. Ugh.

For me, then, and I suspect for others, being kind always is especially challenging when dealing with anxiety, annoyance or aggravation. I need to work on these scenarios so that being kind becomes my first instinct even under various kinds of stress.

I have a feeling I’ll be working on that for a while. Work, work, work – I’ll probably be a work in progress until the day I die. But maybe that’s what life is all about.