Brutally Kind
You have a daughter. She is bright-eyed, and by the time she was eight, you were thinking she might already be smarter than you. She speaks her mind with words of wisdom that seemingly come from nowhere. She's confusing. She alternates high-fives with slams of her door behind angry, stomping feet. Sometimes only minutes separate the two. There's a way she has of asking questions; hesitating between sentences, considering her words, and then nodding when it's your turn to speak: She cares what you have to say. Sometimes. When she isn't texting various friends about the things that make them mad...usually, other various friends. She's going to be a phenomenal mother someday. You know this, because you see the way she notices people. She holds the door at Walmart. She likes it best in a crowd of people. Right up until she needs to be alone. She loves Christmas. You love it because she does. But you're usually tired; to this day, she depends on you to stay up until midnight, because she can't bear the thought of anyone looking at presents until morning. She's funny, and whip-quick: You don't always catch that she's joking, until you turn to glimpse her twinkling eyes. She always forgets her coat. She hugs you sometimes, but not often enough.
Her car is broken down in the darkness, fifty miles from home. You've never let her drive that far before. She says there are no lights on the dash. The same thing happened a month ago, closer to home, but you thought you had it fixed. It's raining. 37 degrees. She forgot her coat. She talks quickly, pleadingly, her voice quivering. You ask her if the engine will turn over. She starts crying because she doesn't know what that means. She just wants you to come. Soon.
Do you go?
You have a brother. He recently moved two thousand miles west: To the coast; a midsize town. It was a job he couldn't pass up. You used to get furious with him when you were in 4th grade, because he used your Cabbage Patch doll in the sandbox to approximate the giant who could only be killed by live burial. But he watched out for you. Quietly, never admitting it. When his friends weren't around, he'd entertain serious questions, and answer them in kind. You fought all the time. Too much alike, probably. You knew you could trust him to be on your side, when your life hit the boxfan. You share a love of old Corvettes and the Green Bay Packers. One of your best trips was ten years ago, when your family and his floated that river in Arkansas on canoes. He fished your husband's phone from the water after his boat overturned in the shallow flats. The phone never worked again. A fact that didn't bother you in the least, because your husband was showing off only minutes before, standing up in the boat. You can prove it, because you've still got the picture you took of his face hitting the water. He only calls you when it's important. But he texts every week or two. You'll see him next at Christmas, when everyone meets at your mom's house. You'll be misty-eyed on New Years Day, driving home, because the smell of tasseling corn and fireworks will be in the air before you see his family again.
He's calling: You know it's important. His wife was in an accident. It's bad. She's stable, but she's floating in and out of consciousness. You can hear his helplessness on the phone. His thoughts trail off, his voice has difficulty finding timbre. He hasn't really met anyone out west yet. Nobody he would ask for help, anyway. He's telling no-one in particular she's going to be ok. You know it's a question. He's hoping you agree. You do. He's trying to hold it together for the three kids, but someone needs to call the school. To find food for a week. Three weeks. He has no idea... Now he's telling you there are papers somewhere that he can't find. Neither one of you is sure what he means. You know why he's calling, but he can't bring himself to ask directly. Even now, he worries about being a burden. He just wants you to come. Soon.
Do you go?
It is a short question, with an even-shorter answer. One too obvious, probably, to even necessitate a response. You would leave anything undone, pay any sum, travel any distance to help, in any way you could. You'd make due with a few hours of sleep after leaving your soaking-wet boots at the door, your daughter safely in her room. You'd handle any consequences of missing work after your flight, calling your boss over the phone, from California, at your brother's house.
You would go. Of course you would go.
So why spend your time and everyone's bandwidth asking rhetorical questions? I'll answer by asking more: What if the family members in those stories didn't have you?
What if that daughter didn't have a dad? If that brother didn't have a sister? And what if you couldn't go? If your truck's transmission failed on your way home from work, two hours before your daughter called? If you were sick, bedridden, when you heard your brother's voice on the line?
To the one in need, and the one unable to help, helplessness feels the same.
In either case, it is bleak, hollow...lonely. We've all endured symbolically the tug of the cold, violent water, as it pulls the hand from our grasp. Known the necessity of time and money, and the despairing realization that we have neither. Been agonizingly humbled by the vastness of distance between us and the need that only we can fill. To be helpless is to feel despair. We've all known it.
But some have known nothing else.
And we don't have to go far to find them. They are the people for whom worse wasn't where it stopped: Things moved on...to unbearable. They are the children who have never known a home, or the warmth, security and peace offered there. The people for whom love is a distant, foreign thought, unrecognizable in its scarcity.
There are people - even among us - for whom 'options' aren't even a dream. For whom 'family' is a construct found only in movies and other people's lives. We have all known helplessness. But not many of us have known it for long. We haven't grown accustomed to it. Haven't learned to live with it as our certain future.
But what of those who have? As a society, we pacify ourselves with the idea that someone is taking care of them. Government, maybe. The thought allows us to move back into the circles of comfort in which we operate blissfully. It allows us to ignore the need around us. Not actively; we don't usually hear of a need, and then do everything in our power to avoid it. We simply don't think about it at all. Some of that comes from our own survival mechanism: It is how surgeons operate on sick children every day. It is how paramedics can see injury and death regularly, and still go home to enjoy the youth soccer game. It is how we go about the business of living, without being completely overwhelmed by worry.
But as pendulums can do, it seems this one has swung too far. We have become so accustomed to comfort, that anything infringing upon it is cast aside. We have become so addicted to bettering ourselves, that the idea of assisting another seems like we're losing sight of the goal. We now live in a society where, for many of us, the slightest shortage can be relieved by the click of a mouse. The first sign of boredom erased, by any of a thousand diversions. We can essentially live an entire life without seeing the pain outside of our own beige walls and flowered curtains.
There is a relief to what ails individuals, and subsequently our communities, and beyond that, all of humanity. It is within the grasp of every man, woman and child alive. It's power is unaffected by one's station, wealth or upbringing. But it isn't easy. It isn't common, because things that require sacrifice beyond what is required to simply exist, rarely become the norm.
It is only kindness. But not the watered-down, tepid behavior which fits our current definition. Despite the undeniable virtues of such actions, we must venture beyond sunny-day smiles, occasional opening of car doors, and the tipping of the hat to friends. We must accept a definition of kindness that is far more aggressive. The kindness I'm describing is uncomfortable. It isn't for those who lack courage, or are weak of heart. It requires time you don't think you have. Talents you haven't acquired. Money you've already spent. It is easy to do things which are 'nice'...and we should. But to do the thing which will remain hidden, which will never be reciprocated in kind - maybe not even appreciated - requires something more.
The avoidance of it is easy to justify, using statements that are absolutely true: Your family is your responsibility, someone else's family is theirs. We take care of our own. If we attempted to help every single person in the world who needs it, we'd go crazy trying.
But the fact remains that people in need will remain in need, until someone with the ability to act decides to do it. More of us need to make that decision. We need not concern ourselves over the impossibility of the task. We can't allow ourselves to be discouraged by the sheer volume of pain we see, when we allow ourselves to look. We need to stop troubling ourselves over the masses, and instead fix our minds on the one. The one next door. The one at school, that our son told us about. The one in line at the store. The one on the side of the road.
Like watching movies, walking a mile, and love itself, kindness is a decision. One which must be made again every day. We can choose to ignore it. But to do so strips us of the license we think we have to complain. To fret over society's failings. To shake our heads condescendingly at the path another has followed.
There is no law of society which obligates us to help the forgotten or the desperate or the lonely. Yet far more powerful than the pen that writes another law, is the one that writes letters of encouragement to one who has never heard such words. Far more meaningful than the payment of another social benefit, is the payment of another's bill, which brings heat to the home of the new friend we'll never meet. Far more affecting than the words we waste in criticism, is the conversation, awkward and stilted, we strive to have with a youth, about whom we have heard only dark things. The conversation which gives him the chance to look into the first eyes he's ever seen which have reflected what he could be, rather than what he has done.
None of this requires a plan. It requires no special skill. No training. No certification from an agency. If the thought occurs to us, for even an instant, that we should try to help someone, we should help. If ever we feel sympathy for someone, even in the slightest passing, we should ask. Despite our misgivings, our concerns over what people might think, over the likelihood that we're inadequate to the task at hand; we should go.
Because we are all inadequate. We are all falling short of the ideal. And it is acting in spite of that, instead of hesitating because of it, that will bring the true joy that comes from being the one who stood for someone who couldn't stand at all.
Being the person who stands in the gap for someone who isn't popular, will never earn us popularity. For someone who isn't rich, it will never earn us financial reward. It may not even earn us words of thanks.
But lives are not changed by those who live for popularity and gratitude. They are changed instead by those who choose deliberate kindness before they are asked. Before they have considered all consequences. Before, even, they know of the need.
Live are changed by those who choose deliberate kindness when it is hard. Especially when it is hard. They are changed by the people who do this when they would rather do something else. Who do it especially for those who have done nothing to deserve it. They are changed by people who do it by force of will, over and over, until one day, force of will is unneeded. Their immediate answer to the question of need becomes short. Too short, probably, to necessitate a response:
I will go. Of course I will go.