I grew up thinking that if I treated people with all kinds of kindness, that is what I’d get in return. I was taught that by the sisters of Consolata Missionaries. But in the real world of childhood, I learned it wasn’t the truth. Children can be incredibly cruel and find one child in a group of many upon whom they can heap abuse.
So why does my belief persist?
Because I began to know more people. And the majority of the people I met did indeed return kindness for kindness. It took most of my childhood to realize that other children don’t know any better and they are profoundly influenced by the attitudes of the adults around them.
So what fuels my belief now? I asked that question of myself for many days, writing things in my journal, and contemplating it. And it hit me while praying the Rosary “…forgive me as I forgive them…” and in the Sorrowful Mysteries, the Crucifixion while contemplating Jesus’s words. “Father forgive them they do not know what they do”.
I see such a full range of selfishness in my acts and witness them in other peoples acts. I have experienced God’s most tender teaching Loving Mercy so many times that I must, I NEED, to pray that God has such teaching Mercy for others. Sometimes when I awaken in the night, hearing my heartbeat I begin praying “Mer-cy mer-cy mer-cy” in time with it for whomever pops into my mind. Sometimes I am so much awakened that I say an Our Father or a Hail Mary, or Glory Be….. Please God, if it pleases You to do so, would You grant that I always have prayers in mind when I awaken?
I believe this could be summed up as: People suck. This is no reason for you to suck as well.