Vachon Imagined

I was taught to be kind, like so many little boys and girls are taught.

Be kind.

I was praised when I was kind and punished when I wasn’t, so kindness became a bit of a trap. Be kind and sometimes be rejected by unkind people. Don’t be kind and get punished anyway.

Over time, kindness can become a transaction rather than an expression.

The truth is that kindness comes and goes. It flows more easily when kindness is returned, but life does not always work that way.

Yesterday, I smiled and held a door open for someone. She walked right through without acknowledgment and with an attitude that would have made my mother want to throw me in a corner. The more fire and punishment involved, the better.

The moment passed in seconds.

Life moves that quickly.

It isn’t usually until afterward that we begin weighing the scales of justice. We observe, analyze, judge, humanize, and tell stories about what happened. In the moment, life simply happens.

We can like it.

We can hate it.

But life does not change for us.

We change in response to it.

That’s just the way it works.

Then something interesting happens. We become curious about our reactions. We notice our prejudices, our assumptions, and the impressions people have left upon us. We begin looking at ourselves without immediately reaching for shame or punishment.

That takes practice because many of our systems are built on punishment.

Punish the behavior.

Punish the thought.

Punish the feeling.

Punish the person.

But when we stop punishing ourselves for what we discover, something begins to soften.

Maybe I’ll stop holding doors for people.

That’s an option.

Maybe I’ll continue.

That’s an option too.

What matters is that the person willing to be offended by her own reactions begins to learn. She hears the old stories echoing through her mind, stories inherited from past experiences and past hurts. She sees how easily anger, entitlement, resentment, and judgment can be passed from one person to another.

And instead of serving those stories, she becomes curious about them.

From that curiosity comes freedom.

From that freedom comes responsibility.

And from that responsibility comes a kind of justice that no punishment could ever produce.