Twos and Kindness

Known as “The Helper” or “The Giver”, Twos really do want to help others, but – out of touch with their own needs – can fall into unconscious patterns of people-pleasing and over-doing for others (often unasked).

We all have a bit of Type Two in us and can learn along with them to pay appropriate attention to our own needs, allow ourselves to receive from others, and – like Goldilocks – learn to give not too much, not too little, but “just right”.

At their best, Twos exemplify genuine altruism and an unconditional love for others and for themselves. They truly know kindness as “the deepest thing inside”.

This is Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye…

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

- Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye