Is Virtue Its Own Reward? Reflections on the Real Price and Value of Kindness...

 

L)) In My Own Words: Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of a podcast episode I recorded where I talk about my experiences and how it changed the way I viewed society and the world around me for the rest of my life. 

"I want to be part of society. However, society must recognise my difference. Unfortunately, in spite of any rhetoric promoting inclusion, those who hold themselves to be the ‘norm’ persist in creating barriers that prevent us from being truly included. Our society , still silently, believes that the non-disabled, Maltese, Caucasian and straight man is the ideal […] this prize has reminded me that I am, and it seems, I will remain the ‘other’. For, even now, what I write may be interpreted to be the angry voice of that young boy who thought he was just like any other boy to discover that he must remain always an outsider."  

 

This week I have been doing some soul searching. I didn’t expect that I would react to this news as I did this time. Perhaps it’s because I’m more in touch with my thoughts and feelings. Indeed, the painful memories of a past long forgotten seemed to have come to haunt me again. I am sorry for being unclear but my thoughts and emotions are unsettled.

Let me take you back to a time when I was a boy of around 10. I was watching the local news in the evening when I heard the name of one of my best friends being mentioned. I admit that I was jealous at first. I was curious to know what had happened. I listen attentively… He was being awarded a prize for kindness… I listened more attentively now. A prize, for what? 

And then , I understand he was being rewarded for ‘helping’ his ‘poor handicapped friend’. Who? Then, it dawned on me as if I was struck by lightning. I was that boy he was ‘helping’. I was the boy described in terms of a ‘needy’ and even ‘helpless’. I felt that it seemed they were talking about another ‘crippled’ boy - not me! I felt betrayed.

At first, I was angry at my supposed ‘friend’. I was angry because I started to suspect that our friendship had been a charade. A ploy to be awarded such a prize or to look nice and popular with others. But, if I think about it, as a child himself, he really had no say in the matter. Undeniably, I did feel betrayed by my friend and while we sort of patched things up, from then on our friendship was never the same.

Why am I telling you this? The truth that this prize for kindness - also known in Maltese as “Premju tat-Tjubija” or “Premju Qalb tad-Deheb)”“ (Golden Heart Award) or “Premju Gwanni XXIII” (Pope John 23rd Award) is an initiative started off by a local NGO called the "Peace Lab”. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the values expressed by this organisation, including the promotion of peace and dialogue between people. However, I believe that the ones who cane up with the idea of awarding a so-called “Prize for Kindness” may not be aware of what impact could have on the children who are being awarded this prize and the child who is ‘being helped’.

I don’t know what my best friend went through then and what he thinks of this experience today. What I can say that it left me with a sense of betrayal and forced me to mistrust others who sought my friendship for a long time. You know it is said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. And I’m sure that my teachers and school had all the good intentions by nominating my friend. But while my friend achieved a certain prestige and recognition, I felt suddenly I was invalidated as a person. And the way the media portrayed me, again, was less than flattering. I was the taker and a burden. I knew that my friend didn’t see our friendship as a one-way thing. Yet, I was forced to question everything. Was I a ‘sacrifice’? 

Yes, it took years before I can say that I regained some trust. However, in spite of the terrible things they said about me. Defining me only in terms of my physical impairment. As if that was my problem. My curse. I have adapted to it didn’t I? Why do you need to deny that my body is part of who I am? Instead, you rob me of any claims to my individual identity. And so, deny my humanity. I know that these are hard words to write. But I can’t shout them out loud because I would gain nothing. For, even if we hate to admit it, such prizes only reinforce our social inequalities not just as disabled people but as human beings. We have to reward a friendship because we still perceive a disabled child to be always ‘less fortunate’. He or she is always taking. As if our friendship wasn’t based on mutual respect and understanding. As if we didn’t share our childhood together.

I want to be part of society. However, society must recognise my difference. Unfortunately, in spite of any rhetoric promoting inclusion, those who hold themselves to be the ‘norm’ persist in creating barriers that prevent us from being included. Our society , still silently, believes that the non-disabled, Maltese, Caucasian and straight man is the ideal. I am sorry to have to say all this but I can’t help feeling that this prize has reminded me that I am, and it seems, I will remain the ‘other’. For, even now, what I write may be interpreted to be the angry voice of that young boy who thought he was just like any other boy to discover that he must remain always an outsider. 

Today, I understand that we are all co-dependent. We all need each other in today’s world. By pretending to be doing charity by simply sending money where, granted, it is needed will not solve the problems of poverty, lack of access, food shortage and the many problems that we all must share responsibility for. Awarding a prize for kindness will always mean that one is, in some way, inferior to another. And, worse, the fact that you’re telling children that a friendship between a disabled and a non-disabled friend is an act of kindness is telling them that such a friendship is a sacrifice where one party is always the less important - the less of value. Have we become so desperate for kindness that we need to reward even ordinary friendships by painting them using our own narratives of heroes and courage? 

Now, my last thoughts. I know that I have used strong language here. But, honestly, I don’t want other children to go through my experience. Yes, I have learned from it as well. Yet, I believe it is diametrically opposed to the principles of inclusion I believe in. A prize for ‘kindness’ is also a misunderstanding of charity. Charity requires us to practice compassion where we help others not out of pity and because we think we are better than them. Compassion and charity are about being with another human being and looking at him or her as your equal. It’s not and should never be a power relationship.

 And what about the idea of rewarding kindness?

“Virtue is its own reward”!

At least, it should be!

 

Related Entries:

Painful Memories of a Prize for Kindness 

> from: Gordon's D-Zone

The True Meaning of Charity

> from: ZoneMind 

 

The True Meaning of Charity (Part 3)

GO TO PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3

As a disabled child, I was angered by people who thought they had the authority to judge who I was. Others who took it upon themselves to define me. To rob me of any claims to individual identity. I know it was wrong of me. However, given the oppressive ideas of who I should be coming from society, I rejected my body and attached myself to a false idea that I was “normal” whatever that word meant. This might be the only way I could escape from sinking into dependence or of submitting to a poor idea of what I could achieve or who I should be. Unfortunately, as we try to deny part of who we are - in my case, the body - we  are also denying to recognise our human reality - choosing instead the safety to an attachment to a fiction that, inevitably, creates dukkha or dissatisfaction.

 

However, before we can take the step and recognise that what we have taken to be “charity” so far has been largely a monetary exchange to calm our conscience. Our practice of “charity” has often been a way to escape from the reality of life and of human injustice. It may have been a way to avoid facing the person we deem to be “In need”. When, in truth, we are simply distancing ourselves because we think we are better persons and, in some perverse way, may even believe that the people going through hard times somehow deserve it. This isn’t real charity however. It shouldn’t be the intention of performing an act of charity for sure.

 

What charity means, according to my current understanding, is the act of being there with the other person. Not believing you are in any way better or more fortunate. It’s an act where you give yourself to the other, placing secondary importance to any differences that are imposed by society. It means accepting the person as a unique individual and at the same time you acknowledge the differences where appropriate, charity requires us to look at the other as a human being. Like us, vulnerable to the process of growth and decay, but also singular in his/her expression of humanity. Genuine charity cannot be separated from compassion. For, in a sense, charity and compassion are, in their true sense, manifestations of the human need to love and belong.

 

While false charity singles out the person in need as someone external to the ideal of humanity, true charity and compassion recognise that the ideal is flawed as it doesn’t exist in the real world. People are not healthy all the time. People get old. people die. And, as for impairment, many people acquire an impairment as they grow older. Thus, it’s the idea of a perfect, healthy and “normal” body which is, in effect, the abnormality here. No such persons who defy the process of nature exist in the physical world we inhabit. And, it’s time that we change our idea of charity from a means to appease our egos and forfeit our human responsibilities to our brothers and sisters, and really practice a compassion that recognises the singularity and uniqueness of the other and, yet, embraces the other as part of his or her own human family.

 

The meaning of charity is about being fully human and opening our heart and mind to others. Not for the sake of feeling or looking good. It’s about reaching out to the other without the shackles of prejudice and pride and vanity. It means being there sharing in the experience of life without imposing yourself on the other but listening to the heart of the other as a person first.

 

As HH the 14th Dalai Lama reminds us:

 

If you want to be happy, 

practice compassion.

If you want others to be happy,

Practice compassion... 

 

Only genuine charity and true compassion can guarantee long lasting happiness for us and to the world that surrounds us.

THE END

The True Meaning of Charity (Part 2)

GO TO PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3

I felt that this background information about my past is important in order for one to better understand the other side. That is, the side of the one “supposedly needing charity”. For, unfortunately, while, rightly or wrongly, many praise the efforts of those who help a particular cause, it’s often the case that those who are “in need of help” remain hidden or even distorted to pull at the heartstrings of potential alms giver. And while the media may attempt to reach out to the people that are facing difficult life circumstances, the lives of such people is often misconstrued to fit into the idea that these situations arise only out of misfortune and society appears to have had no part of the play in maintaining a state of inequality or poverty.

 

As a disabled person, I can speak of my experiences as a disabled person. At the same time, while I share my experience of disability with many other disabled people, my experience is also unique and individual. Not every disabled person may have had the same experience of a boyhood which included a conflict between the ideal of a mind persistently contradicted by for what was, for many, an abnormal body. These are the thoughts and feelings that resurface every time I am witness to manifestations of so-called “charity”. But, on reflecting on my life experiences, I realise that our modern conceptions of “Charity” have seldom to do with the idea of charity as it was originally intended. 

 

In fact, what “”charity” has come to mean today is a market exchange where people can calm their consciences by exchanging money instead of bothering to look at others (deemed less fortunate) as equals. In this, modern “charity” is diametrically opposed to the original meaning of a charity that doesn’t seek for its own self. Don’t get me wrong, money is an important element that can help people get out of difficult situations and live a better quality of life they deserve. However, what I have an  issue with is the intention behind the modern constructions of charity. Indeed, those society judges in need of charity are, in many cases, put across as undesirables, broken or wretched and “lives not worth living”..

 

CONTINUED TO PART 3

The True Meaning of Charity (Part 1)

GO TO PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3

 

Each year, during this time, I feel a feeling of unease and inadequacy as charity events aimed at collecting funds to help the most needy and, alas, “less fortunate” amongst us. I feel this sense that, as a person, I am somehow less than my friends, family and other human beings living in the world. Having an impairment and consequently experiencing the effects of a disabling society, which sometimes chooses to exclude me and pretends  to  be entitled to speak on my behalf, makes me feel like an object to be used for other people’s  ends and a subject to be spoken about and rarely as a whole person. Indeed, so-called “charity” events seem to inflate the false idea that disabled people are not like other human beings.

 

I regret that I have been uncomfortable to acknowledge my physical reality - my impairment. However, as I have grown to embrace the Buddhist outlook, I acknowledge that my body is part of who I am. Indeed, it has made me who I am today. While some voices in society may dismiss my body as deficient and deformed in some way, the body remains the only means by which I can relate to the world. We are not minds (or souls) trapped in bodies. Both mind and body possess the qualities that make me the persons we are today. Attempting to divide these two aspects of our humanity risks to destroy the value of our integrity as whole persons.

 

Unfortunately, how society talks of the body appears to put across an impossible ideal of the healthy, permanent and fully functional body. Any other variations to this idea are, at best, put across as incomplete or, at worse, unworthy of life. I learned since I was young that my body was the problem. Sadly, this meant that I grew to hate my body and indulged in a fantasy of a disembodied mind. I sought refuge in applying my mind to learn, think and many a time sought to overstrain my body to please those around me. Don’t get me wrong, any physical achievement gives me pleasure and satisfaction back then as it does today. Yet, at the same time, the moments when my body didn’t deliver could become times of great personal failure and guilt for not living up to the high expectations of others that were often unrealistic and, frankly, unreachable given my physical condition.

CONTINUED TO PART 2

Random Reflections on Death

Last Thursday, I woke up to what appeared to be going to be just another. day. True, I was still recovering from my back pain and even today, I am still completely pain free. Thankfully, my arthritis isn’t giving me significant problems and I went to work as usual. Yet, I insisted that it was just another day. But, was it? For that matter are the days of our life all the same? Why we forget that, as far we know, anything could happen at any point during the day or night.

Indeed that night, the right side of my body went, for most, tingly and numb. In spite of the fact that this has happened already months before, I was very scared as my circulation returned. In that state of fear and helplessness, one of my worries were because I wasn’t sure of what was happening and couldn’t control it! I was afraid to lose my self there and then. Perhaps I had remained too much attached to who I was. Yet again, there was a fear of where I would go if I would die.

In reality, I realised that I could do nothing. That, at that point, I just needed to let go for anything that is meant to happen and which was beyond my power, will happen.

Surprisingly, there are feelings of anger and fear that emerge once in a while following this experience. I still have to deal with those. However, my feelings may be coming from the realisation that my life may end just like that and how important to do my best when I’m still alive,

Haiku Flow: The Dark Night

I fear the dark night

The allure of sleep, forever.

I cannot escape.

 

Originally posted at:  Haiku Flow: The Dark Night

This is your Obituary

What if you had a chance to take a peak at your own obituary when you’re still alive? And what if, on reading it, you end up feeling disappointed that you really didn’t achieve that much and that people will remember you for little when you had so many great ambitions and plans for the future. And what what would be more important, how people had remembered you or whether you had achieved most of your aspirations in life?

In truth, these two questions are inseparable from one another. The way we view ourselves and the goals we aim for, for better or worse, are influenced by those around us and the society we live in. Of course, people will behave differently when to this influence. Some will simply conform and go with the flow while others will rebel and challenge the mainstream. Others still will retreat to the safety of their own private worlds. But, the ultimate question is what would you do? Would it be more important for people to praise you, celebrate your life and to honour your memory? What if you felt unhappy and unfulfilled until that moment of death? And that all the success and glory attributed to your memory were only a façade - an image you kept up?

There’s no doubt that death is a topic that most people would do anything to avoid. Even if it’s not healthy to be constantly thinking of death, I feel it’s important for me to dedicate some time every day to meditate about your day. Although I don’t always stick to this practice, I feel that putting aside some time to cultivate your awareness of your own mortality helps me appreciate what I have and place my problems into perspective. Because, many times, we tend to think this life will never end and waste our energy in a struggle to get what we want thinking that once we gain this or that, we will be satisfied and fulfilled. I know for I’ve been there many times before. You think that once you get what you wand - be it many object you crave for or a social position,etc. - you will finally be content and peaceful. But that only lasts until you start craving for another thing.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have ambitions or a purpose to live for. However, it’s important that we are aware of what is really of value and to take the time to learn about life and discover what is really of value. For all the belongings, fame,money and all the things the world exalts, these are objects that only provide temporal pleasure and will not last forever. If we aren’t happy with our life, if we’re always absorbed in selfish desires, in fighting to outdo the other and only interested in what people think of us, we’re bound to live a life of suffering. For real suffering isn’t a matter of being in pain or disease. Our suffering arises out of our persistence in pursuing that which doesn’t last, it arises out of our attachment to who we think we are or to who we think it should be… It emerges out of our failure to grasp that in this life, we need others - that in our life we’re not separate from or superior to others.

Buddhist teachings place a great emphasis on the practice of compassion. I am trying to live my if de in accordance with this principle. However, you can find an emphasis on compassion in all the major religions and even in secular ethics. Unfortunately, while many would agree that the value of compassion is important, it’s sad that we’re still afraid or reluctant to live it. Perhaps we fear that in being more loving or compassionate, we expose our vulnerability and weakness to others. Perhaps then we will have to admit that we’re not so special but that we’re all unique and special in our own ways.

Then, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t matter that much what your obituary looked like. Not if you have lived your life according to what you believed in without causing harm to others. Not if you did your best to relieve the suffering of those around you. Not if you really invested your time in growing in compassion to yourself and to others. Not if you tried to live your life being true to your authentic being.

Discovering Happiness in Suffering

It may sound paradoxical to speak of happiness and suffering as if they're related to each other - if not a cause and effect. However, as I meditated on the nature of suffering, I realised that one cannot exist without the other.

Indeed, I've got a long term relationship with pain and suffering. But the fact that I'm a disabled person causes people to wrongly assume that my existence is dominated by suffering. This isn't the case at all. Yes, I do suffer at times on a physical level and I try to alleviate this pain. However, there's nothing extraordinary with my experience of pain and suffering and it comes and goes.

Suffering is inevitable. It's part of the human condition. Of course, I'm not saying that we shouldn't avoid or diminish suffering if it's possible. But we can't eliminate it completely. Suffering is in no way a good thing but it teaches us to be humble. Indeed, it teaches us to be compassionate. It teaches us to be human.

Imagine if you could perform everything you put your mind to with no effort at all. Would you be happier? It may sound ideal. But then, there would be no challenge or goal to achieve. If everything was perfect, how can you know what imperfection is - how can you appreciate happiness if you never experienced suffering, loss or pain?

Yet, while it's good that we try to reduce avoidable suffering, a degree of suffering remains part of our human experience. Eliminating suffering would imply that neither art, science and religion as well as all aspects of our humanity are worthless since they are founded on suffering and a struggle to adapt ourselves to it.

Here I'm particularly concerned by what has Been termed the 'culture of death' characterised by a movement to legislate for a 'right' to die. However, this culture is really based on a denial of a basic human reality that in this life, we must suffer. It's a negation of the fact that we can reduce the suffering of others if only we didn't put things before persons.

This modern trend to sanction and legalise laws such as assisted suicide, and euthanasia have been hailed as liberating and giving people a choice on how to die and when. However, what is happening is that we're giving up our right to life.

There were a few times when I thought I wanted to die. That my life was going nowhere. But like suffering, change is also part of life. And the situation did change. But, if we-expect that we can live in a world with no suffering, then we wouldn't have learned anything for failing would make us suffer, we wouldn't attempt to talk for fear of sounding stupid, we wouldn't invest our time and energy to live a better life and we wouldn't bother to make sacrifices for the benefit of our loved ones.

In a nutshell, not only suffering instrumental in finding happiness but essential to appreciate happiness itself.