If you’re good only when people are good to you, that doesn’t really count for much. It’s when you behave with equanimity and patience and goodwill when other people are mistreating you: That’s when you show your strength.

"All too often we feel that when other people are misbehaving, it gives us license to misbehave in return. Or we’re afraid that if we let them “walk all over us,” they’ll get used to treating us like a doormat. So we feel we have to show that we’re not doormats.

There’s a passage in the Canon where one of the asuras basically says, “If people see that you’re not fighting back when they mistreat you, then they’ll think that you’re weak and they’ll mistreat you even more.” And Sakka, the king of the devas replies, “No. How they see you is not the issue. The issue is your own behavior, because that becomes your karma. If other people misbehave and you misbehave in response, then that misbehavior becomes yours. If they think you’re weak, then they know nothing of the Dhamma” — because you have to remember that qualities like goodwill [mettā], patience, equanimity, and kindness are forms of strength.

There’s that story where Lady Vedehika is famous for being kind, generous, and mild-mannered. And she has a slave woman, Kali. And Kali starts wondering, “Why does she have this good reputation? Is it because she really is that kind of person, or is it because I’m neat in my work?” So she starts getting up later and later and later in the morning every day. And every day Lady Vedehika gets more and more angry, until she finally takes a rolling pin and whacks her over the head. Kali then goes out and shows off the handiwork of Lady Vedehika, the “kind, mild-mannered” Lady Vedehika. From that point on, Lady Vedehika gets a reputation for being harsh and cruel.

The point is that if you’re good only when people are good to you, that doesn’t really count for much. It’s when you behave with equanimity and patience and goodwill when other people are mistreating you: That’s when you show your strength.

In that same sutra the Buddha talks about having goodwill as solid and large as the earth, or as large and as cool as the River Ganges. In other words, you have to think of your goodwill as being too big to fail — i.e., too big to be affected by irritation — and that goodwill and kindness are not weaknesses.

All too many people make that mistake, thinking that when you show goodwill and kindness to others, it’s because you’re weak and you have to, out of fear of their misbehavior. But you need to look at it in another way. When you develop these qualities as strengths, they become your good qualities from that point on — and you’ve learned restraint, the ability to control your anger skillfully. And the ability to control your anger is really important. It’s a skill you want to master, because we can harm ourselves so much by the way we give into our anger and express it."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Helping Yourself by Helping Others"