This Thanksgiving, I had a lesson in giving thanks and a lesson in giving. Above all, I remembered the most important lesson: kindness.
In the past few weeks, I'd aligned myself with an individual who I felt I could identify with, as happens with new-budding friendships. Over time, however, I began to realize at the oddest moments that there was something subliminally toxic about the relationship, or rather about the person itself.
It is an all too common trap amongst us, to bond and enter relationships with an affinity that binds you together — so much that you band together. Against others who are not in your inner circle. For silly reasons, for legitimate reasons, sometimes for no good reason altogether.
Despite my wisdom, I let myself get carried away with the tendency to rant and rave, to mock and laugh. But soon I realized that I was falling into an unhealthy mindset.
Kindness was not smiling benevolently at someone, all the while running a multitude of invectives through one's mind at the same person. Kindness was not running one's eyes over a person's outfit and smirking because you made some judgement based on what you saw on the outset. Kindness was not wishing destruction on the same person you wrapped your arms around, pretending affection.
No.
Too soon I realized that I was positioning myself too close to someone who was full of negative thoughts against almost everyone else. This was someone who took against another person, violently and unfathomably, based on some internal set of twisted contraindications.
I could not understand so many things, yet I kept giving, hoping that something would soften, that some understanding of the basic rudimentary idea of a greater kindness would set in place. It took me waking up in the hospital to be faced with someone's utter self-centredness to come to this realization. Sometimes you need to remove these impurities to be able to breathe freely.
