Hemlock Soup for the Soul II
You never know what effects a random act of unkindness can have. You can change a person's life forever just by offering a little word of discouragement or doing queem a disfavor.I was walking down a major street after dark last night, which is something I don't make a habit of. I just needed to pick up my car from some routine maintenance work.
A few feet away, a mean-hearted stranger honked several times as quem drove by. I'll never forget the way my heart cooled because of queemy thoughtfulness. To make the effort just to freak me out by blowing the horn just as quem passed me -- I mean, the kind of words I use just don't express it. Unkindness -- no other motivation could have made queem do what quem did.
Thank you to everyone who doesn't do what this stranger did. Your inaction could make someone's life better.
posted by Lynn @ 5:19 AM
2 Comments:
Yes, random acts of unkindness can affect us, sometimes deeply. But you're of far too capacious an intellect and, when you decide upon it, resolve to let the effect take hold in some permanently discouraging way.
Look at it this way: you've been constructive with the incident. You've written -- or at the very least posted -- a blog the morning after it occurred, meaning you were probably fighting over this internally long enough to say something reflective about it. You've opted for some kind of catharsis (I hope it worked) coupled with a hortatory word. How reactive the blog is, I don't know, but so long as you "own" that it happened to you and you assume responsibility for, well, your response, you're never entirely overdetermined by this person's actions. (Though, trust me, I know that bearing, sometimes absorbing, the brunt of other's actions does force us into having to negotiate those actions. Those are, happily or unhappily, the conditions. It's never easy.)
Before I say more than is necessary -- one of my tendencies -- bottom line is this: you're better than someone honking at you. Far better. I say, the more [noun for unpleasant people Lynn wouldn't use] honk -- or whatever -- at you, the taller you should be reminded to stand.
Take heart, dear one.
that's precisely why I drive a vehicle whose horn is inoperable.
from shroud: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/113007/go-back-in-time.gif
I thought of you when I saw that. :-)
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