As a child looking up to adults, I recall how kindness was consistently taught within the family, at church, and even in school.
Always be kind.
It sounds simple, almost banal.
But somewhere in my early thirties, I encountered people who shattered this simple worldview. They were charming, generous with compliments, always ready to listen. Until I realized they were collecting other people’s vulnerabilities like trading cards, using their own words against them later. That’s when adulthood taught me that there are people who learned to use kindness as a tool, mostly to take advantage of others.
Just thinking about it, I cannot help but wonder how people use something that’s meant for good for something that isn’t.
What is kindness? A quick search would show you something like this:
kindness | ˈkīn(d)nəs |
noun
the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate
I learned the hard way that not all friendly and generous people truly mean what they say and do. Now, I have learned to watch for specific patterns. Sometimes, manipulators use kindness to hide their real, and often insidious intentions such as:
- Controlling the narrative: People who seek to influence others in an unscrupulous way may employ charm and apparent empathy as tools to gather information and then create conflict. They initially show you kindness to build trust and then mainly to extract useful information. It’s challenging to identify manipulators in your circle, especially when you are under their grace.
- Keeping others from comparing notes about their inconsistent stories. They would act as helpful mediator to hide their true intentions and deliberately create tension between others while appearing innocent.
The child in me mourned how cruel human relationships can be, especially after encountering people who lack genuine self-awareness about the impact of their behavior on others.
But the adult I have become has learned that false kindness from people shouldn’t deter me from pursuing genuine kindness. It only means that I need to choose kindness more, protect it more fiercely, and offer it with the intention of edifying others and not harming them. The lesson wasn’t to stop being kind to others—it was to stop being naive.
jessa 