Err in the Direction of Kindness

I would consider myself a pretty shy person, I don't really talk to people who are not my friends and to be completely honest I don't really do well in social interactions. I prefer to sit in the back of the classroom, a habit that teachers don't really like. People like to interpret these qualities as being closed off and I guess in a way mean, but that is not how I want to be remembered. Being openly kind to someone who I don’t know is something that I struggle with because I am always too scared about what other people are going to think. People tend to care too much about what other people think about them, and I think that this has made us who we are today. We are people who will respond to someone’s suffering timidly and not do anything to help him or her. I think we all need to learn that we are slowly separating ourselves from one another just because we are afraid of what others might say. As we get older we stop caring about what other people might think or say thus making us kinder and actually less selfish.