Kindness
It’s been a little while since I’ve made a post. For me, life has been a little tougher than I anticipated. Transferring to GVSU was the right decision but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a hard decision. I have experienced heavy loneliness which has led to nights of overthinking, anxiousness, and some days of depression. But all of this has got me thinking, what could I do to potentially take those feelings away from somebody else?
When thinking of ideas, things come to mind like, “talk to the kid that’s sitting by themselves”, “go out of your way to compliment somebody in the gym”, and “try to help out someone in need”, are you seeing a common theme? All these are great things, but they all boil down to two main ideas; spreading kindness and love.
From my previous posts, you can see that I really struggle with the idea of love. How can I spread love if I’m so hell-bent on the idea that I’m unlovable? Well in my opinion you can’t spread love without love. That’s like me teaching baseball if I’ve never played a day of baseball in my life. So how does one gain love you might ask? Although I don’t like to get religious on my blog as I know many people aren’t, but I don’t think it’s possible to experience true love without receiving it from Jesus.
Okay let’s say the idea of Christianity really turns you off, then let’s just look at the descriptors of love from the Bible and pretend it’s not from the Bible. Love is patient, kind, not jealous, humble, selfless, and does not look to harm, but most importantly, it never fails. When looking at that, wouldn’t you want to receive that? Don’t you long for that every day? Aren’t those qualities that wakes you up every morning, help you push through the day, and gives you a reason to keep going? When depression, anxiety, worry, and other negative attributes sneak in, it’s due to the fact that we are lacking one if not many of those attributes. When I say this I really want you to understand what I am saying, those attributes are not of this world on a consistent basis. I don’t care how much you love somebody, I don’t care how perfect you think you are, you will fail at one of those things. Again, listen to me closely here, and that’s okay. We’re human, and we’re going to screw up, and that’s the beauty of love, it’s also forgiving and never failing. Failures and screwups are expected, the only truest, purest, form of love, in my opinion, can be received from Jesus Christ. God created us in his image, but we’re not a direct carbon copy, he created us with the capacity of free will, our free will is a privilege in itself, but with this privilege comes opportunities to make the wrong decisions, and you will, and that's okay that you will. Learn to forgive yourself, learn to embrace your failure, and realize that your failure isn’t a testament to your inability to love or to be loved, but a testament to your ability to learn how to love in the purest way possible.
Today, in your pursuit of love, realize the great love that Jesus wants to give to you. If you can’t because Christianity isn't your thing, take the attributes I’ve told you about and try to spread them to somebody. Acts of kindness lead to/equal acts of love. Your little breath of kindness could save somebodies life today. You’re hello to a stranger could be that person's first kind interaction in days. You have the ability to help bring the people on this planet a little closer to heaven and a bit further away from hell with a simple act of kindness.
Keep pushing, keep trying, keep improving, and keep failing. All of this struggle and sadness will end, and you’ll realize all of this was worth something in time. YOU ARE LOVED, don’t give up, if nothing else I love you, and I want nothing more than to see you succeed and make it out of this dark time.
Trevor Crowder