Does being the nice guy or gal mean you’re weak or stupid? Sharon Salzberg tells us why we’re compassion-phobic. This piece is based on an interview by Lisa Schneider. In our culture, Sharon Salzberg believes, kindness is unfairly relegated to “fifth-class status,” a virtue of last resort for those who aren’t beautiful, brilliant, courageous, or strong.

In her latest work, “The Force of Kindness,” a combination book and CD set from Sounds True, she attempts to liberate compassion from any association with “wimpiness” and explores how powerful it can be in people’s lives.

Besides, as she explained in a recent interview, being kind makes us happy. What does kindness mean to you? I think the associations people have with kindness are often things like meekness and sweetness and maybe sickly sweetness; whereas I do think of kindness as a force, as a power.

When I look back over the instances, the encounters of my life, even when I just look around at the world, there’s something that moves me so strongly that really is inspiring and uplifting about people just taking the time to pay attention to somebody or going a little bit out of their way to seek to help them. I can almost feel the palpable force of that. It reminds us of our own inner strength and our capacity to give, and it also reminds us of how connected we all are. — Beliefnet.com