Love and Kindness

Once Upon a time, in a time that still ticks on, spirits walked this earth.

No one really knew these spirits in their entirety because they were painted in colours so beautiful that they were imperceptible to the human eye.

However, the earth's creatures would sometimes brush up against these spirits as they moved through life and they’d feel parts of them. This is why they believed in them.

The spirits liked this, as it was by watching their influence on earth and everything beyond that they knew that they were real.

The spirits were so big and vast, we needed to give them names as open and vast as they were. We called them Love and Kindness.

Love and kindness could be found in the many things that brought contentment and peace to the hearts of creatures everywhere.

The spirits wore many robes. Often the different textures and colours of clothes would brush up on different creatures, leaving bits of the robes on them.

Many creatures understood the bits of Love and Kindness as caring, fondness, faith and hope. Other creatures understood them as, admiration, joy, devotion, compassion, thoughtfulness, trust and honesty.

The greatest pulchritude was found when love was embedded in kindness. As when this occurred the spirit of love would exuded in a way that was kind. This experience was heart warming.

You see, Love and Kindness often went hand in hand. The only difference was that Love is more of a feeling, and Kindness was more of an action.

Despite the spirits, there was conflict on earth. The creatures on earth experienced Love and Kindness differently. Some creatures showed Love and Kindness to themselves before they could show it to others.

Other creatures knew love and kindness by giving it to others, then they could feel it for themselves. Some creatures knew love and Kindness as trust and so would look for trust.

While others knew love and kindness as admiration and so would look for admiration.

One day, the spirit of Love was moving through a lush tropical terrain, when it heard the cries of two humans. Love listened closely. They sounded angry and betrayed, confused by the notion of love, for indeed love could be confusing.

Watching this, Love started to weep too. The spirit was feeling a lot of things: Compassion for the misunderstanding, hope for their hearts and their futures and care for both of the creatures.

To comfort itself, Love wrapped itself in its' clothes and wept so loudly, it was deafening to human ears.

Kindness, having ears that heard far and wide, heard its dear friend Love weeping.

“Love, what’s wrong?”, Kindness asked with eyes draped in the colours of Caring and of Trust, which it had learned from Love many, many years ago. Love took Kindness’s hand and they watched. The young person looked cold and betrayed. The other young person looked self-loathing and distraught.

“I gave them each a piece of my robe, said Love, "but the colors didn’t match. Now neither of them believe in me. Look, the pieces I gave them are now torn in half! They’re much smaller than they used to be.”

Kindness listened closely to Love, smiled, and then kissed Love’s tears. Holding Love’s hand, Kindness said, “Look more closely at the person’s hand...”

“She is holding a tiny scrap of the cloth you gave her,” Kindness continued, “and a tiny scrap of the cloth that you gave the other person. The coldness that they are feeling will make them look for warmth, and with that call, I will find them and lead them back to you."

Love looked up at Kindness and saw them

holding their stare. Kindness, seeing all that Love had given, unwound a cloth from around their face. With honour, they held it out. “This is for you,” said Kindness. “But Kindness, that’s the cloak of Faith! I gave it to you to help people to be kind to each other. It helps them be kind because it lets them know that Love is in everything”, said Kindness.

The Love replied, “I want you to have faith in yourself.”

Recognizing that Kindness was full of love, Love put both their hands on the cloak and tore it in two. Surprised but trusting,

Kindness asked "What did you do that for?"

“Once, I gave you all my faith because you reminded me so much of the love in myself, but now I’ve forgotten to have faith in myself! Because I love you, I’ll take a piece of faith for myself too, so that we both have faith in the two of us.”

Hearing this, Kindness nodded their head in agreement. "There is just one more thing,” Kindness said.

“Don’t forget to have faith in ​all​ of them.”

With that, Love and Kindness looked out into the world.

They looked more closely at the hands of the two humans. Although the earth and its' creatures had taken pieces of it, as well as each other’s knowledge and left pieces of their understanding of love and kindness for everyone around them to share.

Love and Kindness saw this and grinned. To celebrate, they tore a strip of faith from their own robes and snipped them into millions of tiny pieces.

Holding hands, Love and Kindness held the tiny pieces of faith in their other hands. They looked at each other and counted:

“One, two, three!”

And with that Love and Kindness had absolute faith in the Earth and its' creatures. And with that count, they threw the tiny pieces of faith into the air and watched them fall onto the creatures of the earth.

They could not control where they fell or who would find them, but Love and Kindness had faith.

Some creatures thought that Love and Kindness were lost because there was conflict on earth, but the spirits knew that, one by one, the creatures would eventually find the pieces. And when they found the pieces, the creatures would realize that Love and Kindness were always there and would always be there...

even in the most mysterious ways.