Lesson of Kindness Taught by Child to The Real Estate Lounge Chicago

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Do You Have to be Cruel to be Kind?

What's the deal with kindness? A few weeks back my wife said that in response to a fairly unreasonable and charismatically vitriolic Chicago real estate professional (with the term professional used loosely) that I should smother her with kindness. Desiring to do neither, I simply gnashed my teeth until her toxic emails receded toward the back of my mind like a ship headed to sea. But things that recede don't really. Recede that is. Unless they are "nipped in the bud," as Barney Fife used to exhort on The Andy Griffith Show, they return, recur, and reverberate.

A Useful Definition for Revenge

It smacks of the definition once told to me for revenge - revenge, I was told, was the sword that will slay me as I seek to slay another. Double edged, I suppose. Another definition I found useful was - when you seek to dig the grave of a foe dig two, for one shall be occupied by you. Or, if you try to get even, you'll get even sicker. Ouch! With these consequences in mind, the goal for today is to to have the eyesight and mindsight of a child. Meaning? Instead of drilling through google to find the pithiest quote, let me share an anecdote. As is typical for much of my narrative, it has to do with something I learned from one of my boys.

From My Son Jackson Came a Basic and Lovely Truth

Several weeks ago we were invited to a birthday party of one of Jackson's classmates. Julia was turning four and her parents were hosting a to-do at "Pump it Up," an indoor kids' playground with inflated ramps, slides, bouncing rings and climbing walls. The place promised to be a hoot (which it was). Point being? When we asked Jackson what he wanted to get for Julia for her birthday, without missing a beat he chirped "Flowers and a book." Wow, both my wife and I thought, that's pretty charming. And, like most parents, to see if it was a fluke we asked Jax several more times the same question, only to get the same response. On the verge of sleep, when a child's truth seems to flow the easiest, "Flowers and a book," came the groggy voice. In the car on the way to a restaurant, "Flowers and a book" as he yelled out the colors of passing cars. In the playground at the top of the slide, "Flowers and a book," before he amassed a few more bruises on his leg as he bounced down the slide. No matter when we asked, the response was the same - a sweeter than sweet utterance from a child who knows nothing but to be kind.

The Moral of the Story

It's a lot more fun to hear a story rooted in the open truth of a smiling child than to be tied down as if by Lilliputians whose vexing negativity pins you to the ground on their terms of engagement. So step back you Lilliputians. Or else? Or I might roll over and, as my wife admonished me a few weeks back, smother you with kindness in the truest possible sense. I will be practicing my philosophy and reality of kindness through the day as I market Chicago real estate at an open house of my Roscoe Village condo for sale at 2801 N Oakley until 1pm. And from 2p-4p I will be at Belmont and Southport in a Lakeview new construction condo listing while my colleague Mitch Aronson will host my Lakeview condo for sale at 3118 N Sheffield at the same time. Caio!