KINDNESS

AND I DON’T CARE IF IT IS TOXIC; LET’S JUST PRACTICE IF IT IS NEW TO US.

I have been waking up at night to strange dreams, often involving war and pain and sadness. Just the other day I found out that I was being made to cook two people with learning disabilities in a huge barrel and that I was expected to eat them later. When I am dreaming, I am not particularly upset but when I wake, I am a bit alarmed!

When I venture onto social media I see post after post, from people I know I would feel comradeship with, angry at people like me who have always lived in freedom, pontificating about life in parts of the world we know nothing about. I see people saying they would be happy to die if it made a difference to the situation in Iran, saying to the progressive whatever it is people,

‘How can you support the monstrous regime that keeps that country going?’

And I don’t know. I have no idea how I could support regimes like the Taliban or the forces in Sudan or a multitude of other countries of whom my knowledge is hugely limited but equally I have no idea what I can do about all the injustices that are busy smothering the world. I do not understand state craft and I do not understand international politics or how to weigh up the freedom of oppressed people against the fears of regional conflagration.

If I post on social media, it will not absolve me and even if it meets with widespread approval will not make a difference. My insight will never be more than partial and at the moment only extends as far as thinking there are some very, very, very, powerful men in the world who are in control of weapons and soldiers and bombs who seem to have lost any humanity that they might once have had and likewise there are corporations that worry more about profit than a safe world or a world that can live with fresh water and clean air and crops that we can rely on.

I have a problem with evil as I tend to say that we are all capable of evil and I also tend to say a few people like me are more evil than it is possible to imagine. But these men and these companies. They seem to feed off hatred and greed and a total absence of morality and can I do anything about it? No, of course not. With a snap of their fingers, they could make my life intolerable, but for them the energy to snap their fingers would be too much time spent on someone like me.

But I can treasure the people I come across all the time who are full of kindness and warmth. The people I would prefer to honour and treasure.

In Poland, a couple of weeks ago, when we were setting off to go back to Scotland we had planned to stop at a station before the main central station in Poznan. This station was in a less than lovely area and because I worry about all sorts of things, Wendy tried to book a taxi from the station entrance. We were delighted because my phone said it was booked but having arrived in the dark, there was no sign of the taxi, despite my belief that it must be on the way.

Giving up on our attempts to flag down or book other taxis, we walked into a tiny kebab shop to see if the man there could help. He had almost no English, but he could and did book us a taxi and told us to take a seat until it arrived. He smiled a lot. I put a tip in his tip box. He came out to make sure we got into the taxi when it arrived.

On our way to the airport hotel the taxi man got a call and asked us about phones which confused as a lot, but we were able to explain to the driver that a man in the kebab shop had phoned the taxi for us. Arriving at the hotel in a trip that cost a fraction of what we thought it would, we were just booking in, when Wendy realised her phone was missing.

General panic as it is also where she keeps her various bank cards. The receptionist was wonderful and nice and calm. She got me to phone Wendy’s phone and to my astonishment, the kebab shop man answered. After that he spoke to the receptionist, and she to him and she organised another taxi to come by and take us back to the kebab shop.

In the kebab shop the man was again full of smiles. He passed me Wendy’s phone which he had hidden behind the counter; absolutely refused any money and saw us on our way. The taxi man burst out laughing when he realised we had been retrieving a phone. He had assumed we had driven right across the city in search of a particular kebab that we wanted to buy. In the hotel the receptionist was even more lovely and helped us with arrangements for the airport in the morning.

At the very start of that journey, we had seen that our train would be delayed by twenty minutes and were worried we would miss the final connection to Poznan at the next but two stations. A man nearby noticed us and tried to help.

This help was slightly less helpful as he had no English and our phones would not translate. We think he was trying to get us to take the Express train instead and couldn’t quite get him to understand we didn’t want it. He followed us around the station trying to help us and, in the end, started tearing up a paper bag he had some food in to write down instructions. These turned out to be ways to get to the airport from the big station in a cheaper way than by taxi. We didn’t need this help and were very relieved after half an hour of being helped when he leapt onto the Berlin train which he nearly missed while trying to help us but despite that, his attempts to make life easier were wonderful.

We had encounters like this every day that we were in Poland. We have encounters like this all the time at home in Scotland. We almost never meet people consumed with hatred, and amorality. Most people we meet want, in their different ways, to be kind in some way or another. People volunteer to make a difference in their communities for no pay and usually little recognition. People speak to people in the street, usually without suspicion or with a deal to be struck. More often to pass the time to find out about life in the neighborhood; to wish us well.

It is a rare event when I meet people who set out to hurt me or to demean me or to do anything negative. It has happened and sometimes close friends have done this to me but despite that it is far from the norm.

If I venture onto social media or listen to the news the opposite is the case. There, anger and mistrust and aggression come from all quarters. I try to avoid it, but it is easy to see how much it distorts the world we live in.

And so? Can I make a difference to the situation in Iran ? of course not; even the leader of my country cannot make more than the most token difference and I have negligible influence but if I meet someone in the street who is lost I can help them and if I can offer kindness I can trust that this is much, much, better than a scowl and a

‘Who do you think you are to ask help from me?’

It may sound twee, but I am far happier with the kindness and comradeship we can offer each other. It seems more real and more effective and, in my naïve way, a better solution to the problems of the world than visionary political ideals of power for the world order.

I loath what the current Israeli Government has done to the Palestinian people and to people in neighboring countries. It is racist and devoid of humanity, but I don’t think all Israelis are bad and certainly don’t think that Jewish people should bear culpability for the actions of one political governing party. I don’t think Israel should suffer the same fate as Gaza has, if ever the tables turn in the power of that place. I also loath what Hamas has done to its people and to Israel and likewise do not blame Palestinians for the policies of their leaders and don’t think they should suffer as a consequence.

I am also aware that I live such a sheltered life and have been so free of the ravages of war that I will never truly understand the hatred anyone will naturally feel when their friends and family have been killed or their city bombarded or their ability to work proscribed. I am blessed with the good fortune of blithely saying I welcome anyone from a huge variety of backgrounds in my life and am so protected that I can try, relatively calmly, to understand why the growing number of fascists exist in the world without worrying unduly about my future, or not quite yet.

I was at an exhibition of Palestinian embroidery, known as Tatreez, recently. It was stunning and deeply moving. Almost as moving as the posts I see from a Palestinian doctor who is working in Gaza and almost as moving as the silent group of old people I saw everyday sitting silently round a courtyard when, in thrall to socialist ideals, I volunteered on a Kibbutz many decades ago. They were all holocaust survivors and lived lives of pretty much destroyed presence.

I am moved by ordinary people who, in one way or another, try to get on with their lives and tend to be victims of the grandiosity of their so-called leaders.

I know it is a bit silly, but I now tend to reject most forms of politics and have begun to think the values of love and compassion and kindness are all that will save us.

I meet people all the time in my job; often people who communities might try to drive out their houses if they knew their background and yet I am privileged to see them laugh sometimes and relax and play pool. To know that we are all capable of horrors and also capable of kindness and love and that though forgiveness is maybe more than some people can offer, maybe an understanding of our mutual weakness, our common trauma’s, our confused desires for a better world, our inarticulate rage at the hurt carried out on us and our loved ones is the start of the beginning of treating the world and ourselves with a touch of tenderness.

I have a friend; Andrew Grieg who is possibly the most famous writer I know, who a couple of days ago spoke of his love for his wife, Lesley Glaister, another famous writer in a beautiful and tender poem. At this event Cynthia Rogerson read from her latest novel in her usual mixture of humour, sadness at the ways of humanity and joy at our general messed up attempts to get it right. These things I can celebrate.

When I got home late, Wendy was there with a kiss and a story of her day and some wonderful news of her work. I can celebrate this too.

Now, the day after, I am at my Mum’s. She made me soup for lunch even though her arm is still stiff from her mastectomy. She tells me that she is much more tired nowadays; whether that is the cancer or the hormone therapy I don’t know. We sat outside in the sun for much of the afternoon and talked; not about much, just the sort of talk that is a natural tenderness to accompany the pigeons cooing and the sunshine. This I celebrate.

Someone at a University spent a lot of time doing something on my behalf today. The pilot of the plane that took me to England early this morning was cheery on the intercom. I have relaxed and slept a little and tomorrow we will try to decide if my mum is up to the long walk to the next town because she wants to do something different and we both love the Middle Eastern café at our destination.

Before I went to the event with Cynthia, I taught social work students and read from my memoir and they were so, so, kind to me that I became slightly lost. Some of them encountered me later in town and showed me the way to the train station.

I can do these things. If I don’t listen to the news and don’t look at social media, my world is pretty much filled with wonderful people who want to be kind and have a safe and pleasant life.

Many of those people have had the opposite of kind lives and some of the people I meet have not always been kind, in fact have been the exact opposite of kind but they remain vibrant and human in a way rhetoric about bombs and the statements and actions of the likes of Trump or Putin never will be.

And lastly, a photo of the beach at Seaford. I wandered here today with my mum. Once I was harsh with my family. Now I treasure them. The photo that started this article is the room I stay in when I visit my mum. To me it is a calm lovely room; in spring there is loads of cherry blossom just outside the window. It is a safe sanctuary where I tend to sleep late. It took me a long time to learn the value of kindness and to realise that I do not need to stake all on a principle or have the last word in any debate or to get riled when someone sets out to provoke me. It took Wendy (My partner) and my Mum to teach me this simple truth. I do not always achieve it; I still seek approval and acclaim and and often want thanks when I have no need of it - but I am getting there; slowly.

To learn more about my life and life with a mental illness do read my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing. Available from Geilston Press. Best got from Amazon at the moment.