DEAR LISTENER,
My difficulty is being kind to those who are not kind to me.
I feel hurt, hostile, frustrated, skeptical, and inferior.
I tell myself that they don’t deserve my kindness and to be rude to them as well. I am coping by ignoring the person when I see them and talking bad about them to my friend.
My part in the difficulty is that I’m thinking too much into it and comparing myself to them. Although they have not done anything to me directly, I still feel offended.
I am learning that I care too much about their opinion of me. That person does not know me because we have never talked. It helps to ignore the situation.
I could shift my perspective in this way—that this person doesn’t know me well enough to dislike me so I should care about their opinion.
I choose to work with my difficulty by pushing aside the hard feelings and being kind even if they do not return those feelings back. I will learn to be a good Christian and to be kind no matter what.
Sincerely,
Student 82
Female, 17 years old
DEAR ONE,
I have to say that I love knowing about your struggle for integrity. Also, even as an adult, I still find this sort of thing challenging. I guess that my suggestion to us both is this:
1) Success doesn’t always look or feel pretty. It doesn’t have to be graceful. Also, and I really hate this one, it doesn’t always feel good. I think if doing good always felt good, immediately we would all do it all the time. By not being mean (or angry) right back, I do avoid the “hangover”— that feeling that lasts for hours or even days after an incident is over where I am upset and go over the situation a million times in my head. I dislike that enough that sometimes I make a better choice just to avoid that. But just shouting back does have a certain “feels so good” to it that it can be tempting. Using how I think about something or the process I go through to deal with it to judge myself might not be all that useful, since I often mistake how I feel, whether something is hard or simple, or whether I struggle as a sign of not being on the right track. Those are not good indicators.
2) There is a subtle difference, subtle but critical, between what I feel and what I do. So feeling the sting of someone’s sharp words is inevitable. Working not to feel is the same as working to not get the information you need to make good decisions. If I can’t feel the heat of the stove, I am going to suffer disfiguring burns because I don’t have the information about where comfort and safety lie. Same with people. If I can’t feel who verbally pokes at me all the time I am going to suffer disfiguring emotional harms like learning not to trust anyone or suffering repeated betrayals. So, believe it or not, feeling that is good. Deciding on my own behavior is also good. I decide not to hurt other people because it is right for me, because it allows me to live with myself. Not because the other person earned it. I can tell you do that too. And, in truth, I know that my kindness, when I pull it off, has turned out to change people, or give them a break when they were hurting or acting in ways they themselves didn’t approve of. Over time, if you have not already, you will find that out too.
Carry on boldly, you good friend. And don’t give yourself such a hard time for perceiving what’s real. My grandmother used to say “Your reward will be great in heaven.” She is probably right but she forgot to mention that there is a good deal of reward right here on earth, which can only be found when I act within my own sense of what is right and wrong.
I wish you all the best as you continue to hone your growing skills.
Jesse
