H,
We ought to always carry with us, a certain kindness. Hate is not the
way into anything or the way out of anything, but we might have reasons to hate.
Yet, those are isolated and special circumstances. In the main, we are faced with
the everyday decisions to be kind to the people around us who have done nothing
to us, who are trying to cobble together their fragile lives as much as we are
and who are not a party to, as the Buk would say, “whatever is doing us.”
The weight of kindness is not the arrogant idea that our actions have
life or death consequences on anyone’s life but the eternal prescription that
we are pushing people toward the light or the dark by how we treat them. There is
a difference; the former presupposes that we are central to the plot of any
given life while the latter suggests that it is a shared weight. People are not
brought low by one single cruel act as much as by a thousand, over the course
of any given life.
Let us not be arrogant enough to think that we are tin gods but let us
not be careless enough to believe that it does not matter how we treat others. This
does not mean being “soft” or “indulgent” or “permissive”. Many times, kindness
is firm and deliberate. It means making it clear, in your heart, actions and
words, that the other person has value, is worthy of your efforts of love and
is accepted to be as flawed as you are. So, help us all, God.