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Animals know kindness.

They could teach us.

An animal can’t live without kindness. It knows instinctively who to trust and who not to trust. No animal is the beast in the jungle of lore. They may fight for their food, but even the carnivores have families and tribes where they care for others and are cared for by others.

We may imagine the savage beast living by tooth and claw, because that’s what we see with our cursory look. But they have to be cared for and protected when they are young. They have to protect and care for their own offspring.

My point is, we all live by kindness as well as battle. Kindness, in my opinion, is no less important than strength in our list of needs for thriving instead of merely surviving. And in this we are no different from any other living being. In fact, our need for kindness is probably greater because we have the human capacity for denying our instincts.

We seem to be a neurotic species, disconnected from ourselves, prey to a million wrongheaded strategies for living. Hemmed in by our belief systems, we wonder…