You Annihilate Them With Kindness

We’re at it again

Some years back, going on better than two decades now, I worked at a bike and ski shop in Vermont’s capitol city of Montpelier. For the most part, I loved that job, in no small part because I loved to ride my bike and ski. Truthfully, at that point in my life, there was little else I really wanted to do (though Penny was about to mess with that equation a bit), and I thought it was real fun to spend my days working on and selling the equipment that made possible the things I loved to do.

I learned a lot working retail. For instance, most customers were inherently kind, understanding, and forgiving of my occasional blunders (perhaps I sent them home with the wrong part, or maybe I didn’t fix the mysterious shifting issue on their bike, or I could have made any of the other myriad errors of being an imperfect human in an imperfect world), so I learned to have faith in people who were, by-and-large, strangers to me. This was a good lesson.

Conversely, a minority of my customers were not inherently kind, understanding, and forgiving of my occasional blunders. Or (and in hindsight, this seems more likely to me) maybe they did embody these qualities, but for one reason or another, they’d lost sight of them. In doing so, they seemed to assume that I’d been sent to earth for the express purpose of making their lives more difficult than they apparently already were, and so I learned that a minority of people are afflicted with the view that the world and its inhabitants are out to get them. This was also a good lesson.

The other thing I learned pretty early on is that there is only one way to deal with the latter category: Compassionately. With ten times or more the basic kindness and understanding we all deserve. You don’t just kill them with kindness, you friggin’ annihilate them with kindness. To be sure, you do this in part because it’s the most effective way of getting them out of your hair, but you also do it because you know that the only possible reason someone can treat you so poorly is because they are unhappy. Maybe even miserable. And even though you cannot see the wound of their unhappiness, you know it is just as real as if the blood flowing from it were pooling on the floor.

I got to thinking about all this in the aftermath of the recent Washington Post interview (it also ran in the Toronto Star) and the resulting comments, some of which are downright vitriolic. It is never fun to see such hateful language directed toward myself and my family, but is immeasurably helpful to understand that no one could write such things if the blood of their unhappiness were not gathering at their feet. It is immeasurably helpful to understand that the lack of enlightenment we see in others is almost always a reflection of the lack of enlightenment we see in ourselves. Don’t ever forget that, particularly when you’re thinking poorly of someone. It is immeasurably helpful to view the unkind comments as force akin to the wind, something that cannot be stopped, something that I can choose to futilely argue against, or simply allow to blow through me.

(I suppose there’s a third alternative: I could hide from it. But isn’t there enough hiding going on already?)

Choosing to share some of our stories publicly has been by turns one of the most rewarding and challenging things I’ve ever done. Perhaps it has been rewarding because it has been challenging. Part of that challenge is that my words are parsed for meaning I may or may not have intended (I’ve written about this before), or used as support of a pre-existing narrative. Part of the challenge is that we inhabit a society where, generally speaking, we no longer perceive the well-being and support of others to be part and parcel of the well-being and support of ourselves. Of course, I am also guilty of all the above.

Funny thing is, I got on here for one purpose and one purpose only: To mention our upcoming brown ash berry basket workshop, Saturday, March 28, from 1 – 5. So I’ll stop blabbing and say only one thing more: You should come!