I have been getting it done from her for last 2 days. It just took me little bit of drama around illness to fool her around.”, her cheeks burned with anger as she heard this conversation. She has been fool to believe the fabricated story of a classmate who did same for escaping the effort of completing her job. She saw herself as being reduced to a idiot. The incident turned her into a suspecting and unavailable person.
Above incident was shared with me by a friend who admitted that a small incident in school made her realize the complexity behind the decision of belief and help. It is always said that life is the greatest teacher and we learn more from the experience and structured education. Therefore the impact of such incidents is very significant on our lives.
We all face situations in life when we feel cheated for our favors. Such cases can be either ignorant or manipulative. At times miscommunication and ignorance of the person may lead to a situation that turns out to be negative. In such cases the helping party ends up feeling pissed and makes assumptions about behaviors and people. One bad and unclear incident can make some very hard rules in our psyche and may lead to a fixed and blocked mindset. This may lead us to be negative and judgmental.
We should always seek out the much needed facts and ensure we know the complete unbiased story before coming out with any verdict.
At times we may come across people who are manipulative and take undue advantage of the our help. One act of these people can lead to a very devastating and negative impact on the person. When we come across any such case we feel being fools. This frustration creates a suspicious work frame for us and we start being hyper cautious in our responses and reactions. In case the incident has hit us very hard we can become the complete opposite of our helping and available self.
In the long journey of life everyone faces such situations in personal or professional arena. The type,character or gravity may vary for each one of us but the dilemma to believe or not to believe, to help or not to help is faced universally by each one of us.
Now the tough question facing us is what is the judicious approach here. To continue your own ways as you want in-spite of few negative happenings. This approach requires us to be extremely benevolent and generous. It is easy to forget the monetary losses but the loss in terms of trust and relationships hits us really deep and could not be forgotten easily.
The other worldly wise approach to grow sane with each incident and become cautious. This is a practical approach but the issue with this is that at times it is read as to become complete opposite of the helping type. To add to the checks and balances in every aspect is good but to close the door completely is not correct. Each one of us come across situations where we play the role of helper or needy interchangeably. Kindness flows across the stream of life; may be not in single stream but somewhere it connects us all.
If due to few undeserving people we all become self-centrist, the web of life will be stopped. It would be like punishing someone for fault of others. With age and experience we should always add to our observations and point of view database. However the final response and behavior should also be connected to your inner self.
Are we ready to take the risk of a thankless response? Do we have the confidence and peace to ignore the idea of being fooled by people? If we can keep the satisfaction and our mental peace supreme over all the judgments we receive, we can always chose to only be worried about what we want to do. We are only bothered on our role and learning in the process and leave the further part of its acknowledgment. We should be at core worried about the part we are giving than what we are receiving. For every negative incident we can find many benevolent and kind gestures. Let the stories of kindness be our guiding lights and not allow the few rampant acts dampen our spirits.
The journey is tough and at times really hard to continue being kind, but we all need to be determined to continue and work as a positive counselor to someone facing this dilemma.
The below quote about kindness by Robin Sharma can motivate us to continue being kind.
Kindness is the rent we must pay for the space we occupy on this planet.