Kindness and naivety can be as close as they can get but they will never be tangible to each other or become one. There is always a thin but strong line to set them apart. To explain how, let us take an imaginary yet relatable example to real life situation.
You are in your mid teens, who has recently joined college, slowly adjusting to a new life. Both college and school life are different as well same in particular ways. You meet new classmates, make new friends from different localities or even cities. There is a curriculum with some advanced concepts, whose basics is expected to be clear and strong in your school.
As time passes, days turn into weeks and months when exams approach. First time in your life you are appearing for college exams (everything happens the first time in life). An unconditional pressure builds on everyone, be it first bencher scholar champs or the last bencher gang. After the results are out, you have cleared all the exams and did exceptionally well in a couple of subjects.
You will naturally feel an invisible cap of stardom. The lecturers have good opinion about you. You feel like a star. Most of the people, including your friends, approach you in case of any difficulties they face while studying. You are being the “star” (in your head) are very welcoming, kind and humble to help anyone who comes to you.
The next exam is approaching and everyone is busy preparing for it. Those who scored poorly last time, will try harder to make up for the loss. And you will be busy helping out your friends and any needy.
When the results are out, you see your scores are consistent. You are happy for a while until you find out the people who scored more than you are the same for whom you devoted a big chunk of your valuable time clearing their concepts and queries, teaching them everything you could. Feels like seeing someone eating the cheese pizza you bought for yourself. The person didn’t snatch away your marks, but time? You are left disappointed for sometime. It’s human tendency. You fake happiness over their celebration.
After a few days, you have completely moved on, although not forgotten. Semester wise, new subjects are introduced. This time things seem reversed. You face difficulty in some subjects. Coincidentally, one of your classmates whom you helped in the past exam (to score more than you) has a good knowledge about the subject and you approach him for help (calling him home). You learn that he’s not keeping well and requests you to call after some days. You see him after college the next day eating out with friends. He also sees you and both of you exchange casual “hi” to each other.
And when the day arrives, he is out for some important work. Through some common friends you come to know that he was chilling out with pals.
You now realize that you have been taken for a ride. You will either come home frowning or sit in a corner with eyes full of tears. You are deeply hurt. You are constantly cursing yourself for once being kind to the person who now took you for granted. You are blaming yourself, more than needed. You regret everything right from your first meeting with that guy.
Now let’s analyze where it all went wrong. How do you find an unwell person (since days as he said) eating outside junk food the very next day? How did he recover in just one day? Did he have the basic courtesy to call you back and ask your concerns regarding the studies? No. He kept bluffing and you kept buying that. Isn’t it? Your so called kindness turned out to be your naivety.
So from this situation, you learn that there are people who will take you for granted. Not everyone you are kind to will reciprocate the same kindness, rather none. Once you learn, you will think before you ask any kind of help from any person. See, this doesn’t imply that you will be one hundred percent self-dependent or anything. For sure, you will seek help from others. But now you are much wiser. You will see through the reactions or the gestures of people whom you ask help from.
A higher level of wisdom will take over your way of sizing up people. You are not the same naive guy who will be easily fooled or used. A helpful nature who can be fooled is naïve. Learned from experiences and grown wiser with it is called a kind person.
“Kind hearted people are not naive. They know people have done them wrong, but they forgive because they have beautiful hearts.” — Unkown
Every wise person was at least once, taken for granted in life. But that’s not a fault. Not learning from the experience certainly is. These kind of situations are pretty much happening to someone, somewhere and in someway. What’s important is to learn from them and grow in life.
What are your experiences ? Share them in the comments section.
