“Someone is going to take advantage of your kindness.” Different variations of that theme exist in cultures all around the world, implying that people who are kind are going to be used by others who are not so nice. So much of society seems focused on helping the self rather than others, so this belief of kindness being weakness – not physical, but mental and emotional – may not be surprising. Specifically, kindness is viewed as weakness because kind people are seen as easy to manipulate, poor handlers of valuables, and simply naïve in matters of life.
The adjective kind is defined as “having or showing a tender and considerate and helpful nature …tolerant and forgiving under provocation.” These seem like positive traits for a human being to have, yet mentors often try to stamp out kindness in their students, saying that ruthlessness is much more likely to get a person to where he/she wants to be as an adult. Kindness, after all, is just a person’s inability to say no, right?
Not necessarily.
First, kindness is repeatedly mistaken as a personality quirk that makes someone easy to manipulate. Assumptions are made that kind folk can be maneuvered by fast talk and sad stories into giving up time, money, or energy for someone else. For example, a con artist might lie to a nice person about needing a loan to fix a car or help a child, hoping that the person’s “tender and considerate and helpful nature” will result in being gifted money with no interest or rush to pay it back – if it is paid back at all.
However, one can still be kind even if he/she does not pay out. Drawing up a contract that details how and when the money will be repaid, giving less than what was asked, or even offering to help work out a deal with the local bank are all offers of kindness to help out the one in need without being taken advantage of by the con artist. Helpfulness and kind actions do not mean that someone is easy to manipulate.
Next, kind people are assumed to be unfamiliar with the monetary value of objects and the importance of holding onto their possessions. “Why did you give that away? It could have been worth something!” is a sentiment heard all too frequently by those who donate to shelters or causes. Someone who decides to give away old electronics rather than sell them, for instance, can be thought of as a fool who does not understand the value of what was donated.
Kindness does not mean that the giver has no idea or does not care about making money. It does mean, though, that the giver finds the intrinsic reward of providing help to another to mean more than the extrinsic reward of selling items. One is not necessarily better or worse. Each person must make his/her own choice about whether to give or sell, and that has nothing to do with weakness, only a person’s private moral standards.
Finally, kindness is often believed to be a sign of someone’s naivety. Others assume that kind people do not understand how “the real world” works. As such, they are used, abused, and end up losing everything because they simply do not look out for their well-being. Kindness is thought to mean that the nice person does not realize how cutthroat and hard one is expected to act in order to get one’s desires, and so he/she gets nothing and accomplishes little.
Again, this is not true. Kind people can indeed push and fight for what they want to do, what they need to do, but they may not. They may prefer instead to achieve their goals through politeness, compassion and compromise. This sort of approach is commonly viewed as weakness – someone unwilling to fight for resources – but instead, it is just a different way of accomplishing goals.
Rather than putting self-interest first, kind people focus more on helping others. While assumptions about how easy kind folk are to manipulate, how little they value money, and how naïve they are frequently are thought to be weaknesses, I'd say that it takes far more strength to hold your tongue instead of lashing out, to spend time with a lonely person instead of spending time shopping for yourself. I do know that whenever I am kind, I feel better about myself. And, to me, it's a great and strong feeling.