What does kindness cost?

What does kindness cost? 


Compassion? 


Time?

Energy?

The all mighty dollar? 


What does it cost to smile, to open a door, pick up trash, help others, to treat someone as the human being that they are, however different they may be. 


Do you lose anything at all?


Or have you no humanity to spare?


Is your humanity so important, so superior, that you cannot recognize the human in others? 


Others who do not look, act, speak, believe, dress, think, who do not human like you?


Is your way of life the only way?


We are all made of stardust. 


We all deserve to be loved, respected, acknowledged for who we are, not who you want us to be. 


Especially those who have never had the time, space, privilege, safety, care, to be who they are, only who they were told they had to be. 


There is no one way to human. 


Being human means that we are all deserving of basic human rights, to exist, to choose. 


To say no. 


To love however and whom ever we love. 


To be fed, clothed, to have a home. 


To be judged “by the content of our characters and not by the color of our skin.”


To human however we human, WITHOUT treading on the humanity of others. 


For what does kindness cost? 


Or rather...what does kindness give? 
 What is the cost of unkindness, inhumanity? 


A denigration of our fellow humans, who suffer, while we cast our eyes and hearts away and onto ourselves, making someone into an extension of themselves, into object. 


Into facsimile, stereotype. 


Into Asset.

Liability. 


Turning all hearts to stone. 


What does kindness cost?


Or have you no humanity to spare?