A Lesson Pain In Kind

LESSONS

There was this book I loved when I was a child. The Quiltmaker's Gift, by Jeff Brumbeau. Being a children's book, it had these beautifully painted watercolour pictures, which always filled me with wonder whenever I read it. I've read and re-read the book over and over again, admiring the illustration. 

The story was about a little old lady who stitched the warmest, most beautiful patchwork quilts. However she would never sell her quilts for any sum of money. Instead she would give them away to whomever needed them the most. I won't go into the details of the story and spoil it for you. I believe you should read it (yes, even though it is a children's book). The main point behind the story is the joy of giving. And the book was my first encounter with the concept of human kindness. I found it lingering among the words and painted into each picture. But I was much too young to completely comprehend it. So, instead I developed a rather childish obsession for warm quilts.

I didn't think about it again until we had our value education classes in school a couple of years later. Here I found kindness advertised in the pages of  moral science textbooks, as if it was product manufactured by education. The ones who bought it were all of us, the students. We diligently learnt that every human being had to possess a set of morals. Ones that would guide them through the currents of human society. A person must be hard-working, honest and respectful and above all else, they had to be kind. 

That was my second encounter with kindness. I was older and (or so I believed) a little more aware of the world. Therefore I thought I knew what it meant to be kind. A principle, a moral, an act a person performed to keep the people around them happy. But, I didn't give the concept much more thought. And blissfully spent the next years believing in the illusion of kindness I'd formed in my head.

In the May of 2017 that illusion was completely shattered. 

Towards the end of my undergraduate course, I came across an opportunity to travel to South Korea, along with my classmates of a Korean Language class I was taking. Of course, I leaped at the chance. 

 And for the first time in my life, I experienced what it truly meant to be kind. The people we met welcomed our little group with so much warmth and acceptance that it was overwhelming. Up until then, I had only been receiving kindness (as a form of love, I suppose) from the people I knew – from my family and from friends. Never in my life had I experienced such generosity, warmth, and genuine affection from complete strangers. Throughout the entire trip, we continued to receive more and more. Whether it was a simple meal, a gift, or even a prayer. And with every town and city we visited, a new crack appeared in my perception of kindness, slowly chipping away to reveal the hypocrisy of it. There was one incident in particular that completely changed my perception.

We were in Seongnam, a city quite close to Seoul. It was our Korean teacher's hometown. So, we were spending a couple of extra days here than we had in the other towns. The afternoon in question was spent in the company of the youth group of our teacher's church, Jumin Church. The members of the youth group first took us shopping, after which we went bowling. While we were shopping, I was looking for a gift for my brother back in India. He's a wonderful artist, so,  I was looking for colored markers. The store was pretty big, and admittedly, I was lost. One of the youth group members, a girl by the name of Han Jung Hyeon, noticed my dazed expression and joined me in my search for the markers. We soon discovered that they were selling both individual markers and boxed sets. I picked up one of the box sets with over twenty markers and quickly realized I couldn't afford it. I put the box back and began selecting colors from the individual markers' section. Jung Hyeon asked me why I didn't want to buy the set, to which I sheepishly replied it was too expensive. She seemed to ponder the statement quietly. 

After I had selected a few colors to buy, I made my way to the billing counter. As I was waiting for my turn to pay,  Jung Hyeon came up to me again and asked what colors I had selected. When I showed her, she nodded quietly and mysteriously walked away. Thinking little of it, I turned back to the billing counter. Once I had paid for the markers, I joined the rest of the group who were waiting near the entrance. Jung Hyeon once again came up to me, and with a shy smile , handed me a couple more markers.

"For your brother," she said quietly.

Dazed and completely overwhelmed, I took the markers from her. I offered to pay for them. But she furiously shook her head and said it was a gift. Once I had recovered from my surprise I thanked her, though I felt like I couldn't thank her enough. It was a small gesture, but one I would never forget. 

It was then I realized the differences in our upbringing. Even though we were taught to be generous and kind in school, we were also taught to be generous and kind to the people we knew. We were taught to share our fortune with the people we cared about, but not with complete strangers. It wasn't mentioned in our textbooks of course. In school, we were taught to be kind to everybody. But society taught us to be selective with our kindness, to hoard it for the people we deemed deserving of it. It was an involuntary thought process, subconsciously drilled into our minds. And I didn't realize how wrong it was until I was on the receiving end of genuine kindness and generosity.

Throughout the trip, were instances that often left me, and the others in my group speechless.  And much too our embarrassment, we realized that we were terrible at expressing our emotions. We discovered this when we were leaving the first town we had visited, Gunsan. During the course of our stay there, we were accompanied by members of the local Haesung Church, particularly by Kim In Ha and her father, a church elder. They were the very first people we met in South Korea. The very first ones who made us feel so much at home in a foreign land. When it was time for us to say goodbye to them, both In Ha and her father got very emotional and cried. Initially, we were flabbergasted and did not know how to react. But then we realized that we had made friends for life during this trip and our hearts were filled to the bursting with gratitude and warmth. We thanked them again and again, out loud in our hearts as we bid them farewell. We didn't know how else to express our gratitude other than a meek 'thank you'. It seemed insignificant in comparison to everything we received, but it was all we had. And so we said our 'thank you's and fervently hoped that the sincerity reached our hosts and our teacher.

When we got off the plane in India, I was still in a daze. In fact, the whole group felt like we were not the same people we were when we had boarded the flight to Incheon, South Korea, fifteen days earlier. We brought back with us many things, many of them being gifts from our wonderful hosts. But one gift which I'm sure will stay with us for life is the lesson of genuine kindness.

Days after the trip, as I lay in my bed in Chennai with my mind still back in Korea. I thought of how I could repay all that I had received from our Korean hosts, our teacher, and everyone else who had ever shown me kindness without me realizing it. I was going to pass on this feeling of gratitude and happiness to as many people as I can. I am going to repay kindness with kindness.