This morning I had an irate customer on the phone. I knew I was in for trouble when I could hear the ‘I’m going to give you a piece of my mind and won’t stop until I am done’ tone in his voice. The man carried on, he proceeded to tell me we were unprofessional, that if we didn’t want his work we should just say and that he wanted/needed it to be done before Christmas. Why did he want it done before Christmas? Was the birthday myth of some small child who had, apparently, changed the world, the pivot of his whole year? If he was so worried about Christmas why didn’t he draw upon his Christian spirit and stop with his berating when he knew he had said all he needed to say? Why didn’t he listen to my apologies and my understanding of his frustration? Was HE really such a good Christian that his day praising the birth of some long fêted deity would be ruined by us? After I had put the phone down, I cried. No, I sobbed. I cried out the months of frustration, the worry both on a personal and professional level. I sobbed at my own weakness in creating a world of smoke and mirrors where outwardly everything ‘seems’ fine and dandy. I cried because I don’t need reminding by a stranger of my own inadequacies but most of all I cried for selfishness and lack of kindness. I don’t hold any Christian views, that is my choice and my right. I don’t despise those who do either, everyone has a right to chose their own beliefs.
The ‘man in the van’, who lives down the unmade road that runs past our house, was treated to some human kindness from my husband and me last week. It was freezing cold and we had some leftover supper from the night before, it was going in the bin. We cogitated over taking it to him. What if he was a mad axe murderer, a lunatic, a paedophile (what a world we live in that, that should cross our minds) He shunned all human contact and lived in the back of his van. We caught on to what we were doing, we were assuming the worst of a man who for his own reasons had decided he neither wanted, or needed, human company. We were judging him and forming an opinion without any factual evidence to support that judgement. In taking his decision to live as he did he had made enemies, not just physical enemies (someone had smashed the side window of his van recently) but also those who did not understand, nor want to understand him. They fear what they cannot understand and refuse to try and change. Peter accepted the food graciously, he also accepted the fire cement that my husband took up to seal around his dangerously leaking, home-made, log burner. On Friday he moved on. He will be back. Over the summer he has obviously found solace in that small, undisturbed part of the world that borders so closely onto my own.
On Christmas Day if Peter is back I will take him a lunch, not to celebrate a birth that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago but just to acknowledge he is on this planet too. He might not leave a massive footprint when he goes, he may be shunned for his looks and his lifestyle, but he is here, he walks the same piece of rock and molten lava that we do. He doesn’t rant and rave about the inadequacies of others; he sits quietly on the periphery of everyone else’s world, living how he chooses. Whether his decision is driven by fear, disillusion, heartbreak, misery or just pure madness I do not know. I do know who I would rather spend time speaking to on the lead up to that day of families and festivities and it isn’t the customer who left me feeling utterly inadequate this morning. Kindness when given doesn’t expect anything in return, it isn’t given out of pity or to appear patronising. What kindness does do, hopefully, is make a small difference to someone’s day and best of all, it doesn’t give a damn what day of the year it is!
