If choosing kindness over aggression is believed by some to be weak, then what makes it so hard for so many to be kind? After all, if kindness is weakness, shouldn’t it be easy?

I believe reality teaches us that acts of kindness, responding with nonviolence rather than violence, talking rather than shouting, takes strength. Pure, unadorned, strength.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been one of my heroes since I was a little boy. Our family’s pastor, Reverend Wilbur O. Daniel, marched with Dr. King. I don’t know anyone who thinks Dr. King was weak.

The question is, what makes it hard for so many of us to choose kindness over aggression? The answer, I believe, is vulnerability. When we’re aggressive whether mildly or not-mildly expressed, no one can be emotionally close to in a healthy way.

Aggression builds a moat around us that makes it all but impossible for anyone to get close to us. Aggression can be an armor that prevents intimacy.

Lastly, there is this. If you look around you at the world we are all in right now, the words from various leaders of all walks of life, wouldn’t it be healing for us all to see kindness and communication and problem solving rather than cruelty, verbal battle, and problem making?

I say, choose kindness.