Kindness is so very important. It is often the tiniest thing to the person showing it and as wide as the ocean to the person receiving it. The flip side is when we act dismissively, rudely, or mean to someone. We don’t know how deeply we are impacting them. It can seem so unimportant to us that we don’t even notice we were doing it.
I can recall many times in my life when people have been understanding and done small things that were helpful in times of great stress, but I have been most impacted by people during my school years, especially in my teen years. This tends to be a turbulent time in the lives of most people. However, I was also carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Mum was home, clear of cancer, but now enough time had passed for her to be suffering the side effects of full body radiation treatment. There was a range of issues, such as thyroid problems and a wicked case of Tuberculosis, picked up during a stay in a hospital room with an undiagnosed TB patient. Each health issue was worse than your normal case, more complicated and always with the warning, “Your mum might die. She’s pretty sick this time”
I was constantly walking the tightrope of “help your mum, or she will get sicker” and “I just want to hang out with my friends”. Every time another issue arose, I would find a way to blame myself. If only I had behaved better or helped more…
I felt completely responsible for her health, for making sure my younger siblings were doing ok, and for my dad, who many times did not have good mechanisms for coping and was prone to breakdowns. This was not ever my responsibility. I did not contribute to her illness. But if I am honest, I have only just come to believe that in the past couple of years truly.
my burden was hidden inside
This part of the story is just to help you understand the burden I was carrying. Most of my interaction with people was limited to school and church. Many of my teachers acted like we students were a problem to them. They certainly didn’t appear to see being able to educate as a privilege. Maybe they were just beaten down by life too, but it was no help to a maladjusted teen.
I had one teacher, however, whose kindness was the light of my life (We’ll call her Mrs F). She spoke to us like we were human. She was firm but always very encouraging. Encouragement was something I craved at that time in my life. Struggling with feeling accepted and thinking I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t run fast, wasn’t great at focusing on academics, and couldn’t get things right at home. Mrs F was always standing at my shoulder, showing me that I could, in fact, do anything I put my mind to if I just persevered. That I had value and was worth someone’s effort.
She didn’t even know
I was blessed with the opportunity to speak to her about it some years after the fact. I wanted to thank her for the way she helped me traverse a hard period in life. The interesting thing about it was that she had no idea she had such an impact on me or how much of a difference her kindness had made in my life and how it still impacts me today. Mrs F was a shining star who, from her perspective, was just “getting on with her day”.
I personally rank people who are kind and encouraging to be of the highest importance in our world. Being firm and truthful with people comes with this, but it is better received when served out of kindness. I like to try and remind myself in every interaction that I don’t know what sort of day the person is having, what hardship they are enduring and what they aren’t saying. Too often, I miss the mark, but if I can be one person’s light, I think I will be ok with that.