The Kindness Down There

The last couple of years, I got quite cynical about humanity, at least most of the bit of it that I knew. I couldn’t help it: time after time, I saw one person after another – including ‘do-gooders’ of the highest order – get unmasked as really nasty lowlifes. I got hurt, so profoundly, so many times, by so many people, that I made an informal decision somewhere deep in my heart to opt out of the human race, and to keep my distance from now on.
 
A couple of weeks’ ago, I had a collision. Thank G-d, no-one was hurt, and G-d did a number of massive miracles for me that took care of the immediate financial cost of getting everything sorted out, because it turned out my car wasn’t insured. But for a day or two, I was bumping along at the lowest of low points.
 
“How can this possibly be good?!?!” I wanted to know. “How can the crash, and the additional financial stress, and all the emotional and spiritual trauma I’m going through right now, possibly be good?!?!”
 
That was part of the test. To believe that things are good, even when they looked anything but. I nearly didn’t manage it – for a couple of days, my emuna and my belief in G-d’s goodness got very, very wobbly. But G-d came through for me, filled me up with strength, acceptance and emuna – and then, the ‘tangible’ kindnesses started to come through thick and fast.
 
All of a sudden, at that lowest of low points, my husband and I found ourselves the recipients of so much pure, altruistic goodness. People went out of their way a lot: one friend fed me food, but also gave me so much quiet understanding, sympathy and support. Another one paid for all the financial fallout from the crash (!); yet another friend offered me her car for a week, until we worked out how to get my car roadworthy and back home.
 
A couple of incidents really stand out: one of my friends was out of the country when I crashed, and only got back a couple of weeks’ later. She called to catch up, and I could palpably feel her distress about what happened coming off the phone. A few hours’ later, she shlepped a massive box of food from her home (she doesn’t drive) and delivered it straight to my door. I felt so loved.
 
Separately, I’d signed up for a month long ‘spiritual dance’ workshop, which I felt would be so good for a badly repressed Brit like myself. It was great – but it was also more than I could afford after the crash. So I called them to cancel, with a very heavy heart, and I thought ‘that’s that’. I was wrong. I got a text message a few minutes later, telling me they were waiving all the charges, and sending me ‘love’ – but it wasn’t just a platitude, I could literally feel the love oozing off the text message.
 
It’s true that when it all hits the fan, that’s when you see who your real friends are. I had people who I thought were ‘friends’ who I realized, aren’t. Again, that’s good, because I still have a few people who made it under my emotional radar before I worked out what I was really dealing with, a couple of years’ back. When you never ask for anything, when you (apparently…) never need anything, you can very easily find yourself surrounded by people who never want to give, although they’ll make a very big show of pretending otherwise.
 
When I crashed, I crashed in a load of ways, all at once. I was so shaken up, spiritually and physically, I couldn’t function for a week. I couldn’t really talk to anyone. I couldn’t cook. I couldn’t do washing. And I couldn’t just ‘outsource’ everything, because our finances had also crashed.
 
I needed G-d. I needed people. I needed reassurance, and support and love, and thank G-d, I got what I needed.
 
For as long as I was self-sufficient, and OK, and sorting myself out, I had no idea how much kindness really surrounds me. I had no idea how much good there is in the world. I had no inkling of the tremendous, all-encompassing love and compassion for others that exists in a real Jewish heart.
 
It was a shocking discovery, in the most positive sense of the word. My life is (yet again) in the process of being radically shaken up by G-d; everything appears to be on the table again, including our finances, ‘what I’m doing with myself’, where I’ll live in 12 months time, where the kids will go to school.
 
I have no idea what’s going on, or how it’s all going to resolve itself. But one thing I can tell you: the crash showed me there is good in the world. It revealed the beautiful hidden dimension of so many people in my life, and showed me that I really am surrounded by kindness, Divine and otherwise. And for a love-starved, distrustful, formerly cynical person like myself, that is probably one of the biggest presents G-d could ever give me.
 
 
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You’re welcome to write Rivka Levy at rivkawritesback@gmail.com