Not long ago, I had just obtained my driver's license and hadn't gained much confidence yet. Nevertheless, I drove when necessary. Once I was driving back from an errand through a seldom-used road to save time during late afternoon. Suddenly, I felt that one of the tires was deflating: I had a flat tire, that's what I miserably concluded. I got out of the car halfway, desperated and thinking, "What do I do now?" I'm not able to change the tire; I'm just not able at all. Occasionally, a car passed by, and the driver looked at me and left. I felt like the unfortunate one descending from Jerusalem to Jericho. I was in the middle of the countryside, looking left and right to see if a good Samaritan would appear. No one stopped, and meanwhile dusk was setting in. "Oh my God," I said aloud, putting my hands on my face.
Suddenly, a voice behind me said: "Well, look at that, this nun can't change a tire." A man dressed for work, coming from the fields, was nearby. I looked into his eyes as if he were Providence itself. With a sigh of relief, I pleaded with him, "Do you truly have a kind feeling towards me in your heart, and will you change my tire? " – Can you do it, though? – "Maybe," he said, "after forty years of being a truck driver, perhaps I can change a tire on a Fiat 500." My heart expanded, I handed him the keys, and in a few minutes, he disassembled the tire and replaced it with the spare one. I couldn't believe my eyes, and in the end, thanking him profusely, I promised that I would say a rosary to the Virgin Mary for him. "No, no, that's too much," he said, "an Ave Maria is enough." But I had decided on the Rosary.
Thinking back about the journey, after a moment I looked at the rearview mirror and that man was still there, in the same spot where I had left him, smiling and waving at me. "How kind," I thought, and as I continued on my way, I reflected on the meaning of kindness.
When you meet inborn kind people, you are always surprised, almost enchanted, speechless. But we often have a false idea of kindness. We consider people to be kind when they speak with a gentle voice, have refined movements and seem to walk without touching the ground.
No, kindness is in our hearts; it is related to empathy, the feeling that makes one feel the joys, difficulties, and sufferings of others and prompts one to move hands to help those in need. Kindness is beauty, inner beauty that is transmitted in actions and that deems it simply honest and duty-bound to feel the situations of others, especially when they are in difficulty.
Kindness is not in manners, although manners can reveal its existence. It is not only courtesy or politeness, although they can be a possible manifestation. Kindness belongs to the being of the person; it is a permanent state of mind, the result of a spiritual journey of sincerity, altruism, and closeness.
You can be educated, polite, refined, but not necessarily kind, even though kindness includes good education and courtesy, correctness and cordiality. The opposite of kindness is not rudeness but indifference, distance, carelessness, insensitivity towards others.
Being kind means being supportive in relation to those who suffer, welcoming humanity in people, and being capable of taking on their weakness and vulnerability. Kindness is not hostility and indifference but a feeling of closeness and participation. It is a great force of love, that kind of love that is so great that it always prefers the altruistic "We" to the solitude of the selfish "I." Kindness makes us good, strong and capable of serenity.
That man coming from the fields wearing dirty and mudy shoes was a kind person with a particular inner beauty. He didn't settle for helping me; he kept an eye on me, and in his heart he was willing to be sure that his solidarity had a lasting and good continuation.
Kindness is the inner beauty that we can be, have, and give "so that the world may believe" (John 17:20). Kindness is the beauty that recovers the meaning of human life, so as not to become mere "experiences" but to see, understand, and act as living beings, like our God who is the Living One and, therefore, besides being Love, Light, Goodness, and Mercy. He is also Beauty because only beauty has been spread in creation and in the human soul."
