Sayers says “Here we come up against the deep gulf fixed between love and kindness.” and then quotes Lewis:
There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness . . . is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. . . . Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering…. It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes.
-C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I think when I was young and I read this, I didn’t get it. In fact I’m sure I didn’t. Now I see that sometimes “kindness” is much easier than love, and can even be damaging. Unconditional kindness is NOT unconditional love. The real thing take more wisdom than you can imagine.