A Year Of Kindness (X): The Quiet Ones

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 Among the few things that will even send me into what passes as a rage is the mistreatment of animals (or really, I suppose, Nature of any kind).

I am mindful of the comment by the late Gene Logsdon that "Mother Nature could just as well be called Old ***** Nature."  Nature is as cruel as it is caring.  Logsdon uses the image of a buck being brought down by a pack of coyotes or wolves, the last minutes of pain and terror; is this not, he asks, not more cruel than a sudden event that ends in the same manner but without suffering or foreknowledge?

But the fact that Nature is cruel does not mean that anyone has the right to make it more cruel.  The same goes for how we treat people.

Animals can give signs and indications that something is not right, but it is not as if they have words that can tell you such things.  The reality is that the same is true for people as well.

I wonder if we often grasp the fact that for every person that can verbalize clearly mistreatment or harm that there are far more that cannot.  They have learned to simply muddle through life with the coping mechanism that they have in place - perhaps from a place of fear of what might happen if they do or perhaps from a place where they have never come to know or expect anything else.

I write this, I suppose, with a bit more of an edge than I usual approach such things.  For me, this is something personal.  I am one of those silent ones.

No, there is no significantly traumatic event in my past that has brought me to this as others have.  It is something that is more in my nature, likely compounded by the fact that as an introvert and someone who is conflict-adverse, I simply do not push back.  I have learned to manage through things to keep the peace and move things forward. 

If you have never paid such a price, do not underestimate the cost on the person involved.  It can be far more than you think.

Which, of course, is where kindness comes in.

Kindness, when practiced freely and without limit, acts as a buffer to such people (and animals as well).  We may never know what other people are going through - and by the practice of kindness, they may never feel the need to tell us.  What they will feel is noticed, attended to, respected. 

Even, dare we say it, loved and of infinite value.  Sort of like how God see us.

You can always tell when animals have been treated kindly.  They will show it in their reactions to you.  The same, I think, can be said of people.  It may be in an unexpected conversation or an unlooked for gesture or something that they present you - in physical form or words or music or really anything.  Something that they would not share with anyone but someone whom they feel safe with.

And ultimately, perhaps that is an aspect of kindness we never consider:  we create a space which is safe for everyone to feel comfortable and be themselves.  Which, as an introvert, I can assure is one of the greatest gifts you can give.