Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.
I have been grappling with so much sorrow. It is grief, really. All that has been lost needlessly to the wants of this world and others in it. When I survived my brother’s hands around my throat, now so long ago. I resolved that no one could take this life, the last thing that was mine, from me – but me. And in some vague illusion of control, I thought this could be enough certainty for me in life or death.
It never was certain, and never could be, I learned bit by bit as those around me lost their lives in different ways to their mental health struggles. To suicide, accident and medical emergency. All lives of potential, such beautiful people and women, their time cut short by completely preventable circumstances that lead to events that could have been managed and handled, leaving them with long lives ahead. But no one had the time for them, to ask the right questions, to listen to their honest answers and to implement the necessary strategies to support them. There were no beds, not enough workers, expensive privatised systems and specialists who deigned to give them 5 minutes of their time on a regular basis to continue a program of medication and electroconvulsive therapy. 5 minutes that was not enough to ask, speak or be heard, to absorb any information or process any changes needed. Vital information was ignored, neglected or just flat out missed. And now they are not here. To be heard. Ever.
To me, mental health care is care for Capitalism to continue. The patch up job on the dodgy tire to get a few more miles out of the car before it’s out of commission. Ineffective in any long-term sense, a quick shock or two and some meds to churn you back out into the workforce to earn and spend with the ‘normal’ of society. It’s not person centred, it’s about the individual taking responsibility for the broken systems around them and have them medicate themselves enough to assimilate back, until the inevitable relapse. Which again is the individual’s responsibility to pop back in for some ‘top up shocks’ to reset. To forget. What was my problem with the world again? Must’ve been me. Certainly wasn’t the ‘normal’ people who work jobs and spend at shops and contribute to society. Must be me.
And if you don’t think this is what is encouraged, sit in a group therapy session with clients hurting because of all they had to change, that they never realised. Virtually every little thing, to fit in, to go back to the world. And the therapist says ‘I know, it can be hard.’
I would say maybe, but by now it should be obvious, it is not on people suffering from mental health conditions, trauma, neurodivergence or any general disillusionment with the world, to bear the burden of being wrong and having to adapt to a broken world that doesn’t stop for a SECOND when they die. Capitalism can’t give them the time, rest and reprieve financially to recover in any meaningful way. Maybe it is time the world started insisting society make room to allow sufferers to do so.
But I won’t hold my breath. Capitalism has us too tightly, in every part of our trivial pursuit pie but one, the great void everyone feels. The Jehovah’s Witnesses await the second coming of Jesus to bring a paradise earth, destroying all governments, so don’t believe in practicing charity work or helping society now. Revolutionaries focus on the downfall of Empire, and all means go to that end. We are so far from a new world, we won’t build communities overnight. And as my GP reminded me, people need help now.
People with mental health problems have a unique position of opportunity for each other. We see a lot of the problems going on in our world, and have been the victims of many of them. Unlike the ‘normal’ of society, we have put a great amount of work into improving ourselves, our resilience, our interpersonal skills, our truth testing and identifying our values. We know what matters, and we know what matters to us. We are the ones who will hold the space for us, for each other. We do not want to see another life fall to the lack of care of a system that is not made for the consumer. Our illnesses and our differences mean it is we who have the strength we need to overcome the inequality and unfairness. We don’t need a system to save us. We are here, and I am here.
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