Lessons in Kindness - Geneva Reid
Among other lessons I learned during the pandemic was the overwhelming need for kindness. Watching the world news more than ever before, I ached in response to the universal suffering I witnessed.
As a child who grew up reading Charles Dickens, who, of course, always created unforgettable villains, many of whom specialized in tormenting children, I have always been aware of injustice by authorities and especially by despotic authorities, and there are plenty!
But it was a movie that actually launched me into the world as a protester against injustice! The movie was A Place in the Sun, based on An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. My 14-year old self wept when Montgomery Clift was found guilty of murder and executed by the electric chair. It was perfectly obvious to me, a 14-year old romanticist, that he was innocent and had been found guilty primarily because he was poor and uneducated. What I perceived as a miscarriage of justice led me to protest the death penalty and launched a lifetime of paying attention to injustice and making lots of noise about those injustices.
But protesting injustice does not always result in kindness and isn’t always motivated by kindness. My self-proclaimed good deeds were frequently motivated by anger—anger at unjust laws (my interpretation), anger at despotic leaders, frustration at the ineptness and the lack of foresight of elected and appointed officials. I seldom concentrated on the persons who were being hurt by the injustices. So the sea change which I am hoping has occurred is that from now on I will really see the person who is hurt by that unjust law or that unsympathetic teacher or doctor or school board member and will try to be kind (helpful) to the victim.
