Cup of Thoughts #2: True Weight of Kindness

 

The Opening Sip of Thoughts - Infuriating Toxicity and People

More common than you think

I am sure we all have had at least one person that we find annoying. Whether they are extremely prideful and arrogant, extremely lazy and too carefree, or simply isn't pleasant being around, these kind of people are the ones we would rather not be around too much with. Personally, I despise when people are arrogant and belittle others without a second thought. I hate when they think they are this supreme main character that deserves everything while others deserve only their crumbs. This, I noticed, also came from MY pride. But that is a topic for another day. 

Repeating what I said, I hate arrogance and pride in people. I also dislike heavily when someone easily talks bad about strangers online, especially in competitive video games. If you've read my introductory blogpost, you'll know that I'm an Indonesian. If you haven't, now you know. Indonesia is a part of South East Asia, and if there is one thing South East Asians teens love, its the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. This isn't a jab to the game itself, though I have many not so positive things to say about it. I want to talk about the community and the interaction between players that occur frequently. If you've ever played League of Legends for a bit, you are probably awfully familiar with this type of players. 

Mike Tyson said that social media made people too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it. I'd say his words hold truth, but not only social media, but online games too. The number of "KYS" and many unpleasant words that have been said in chats of games like League of Legends is terrifying. In real life, these is no better. When people play Mobile Legends, Valorant, and games alike here, upon witnessing a teammate playing poorly, they turn into machines that has been trained to say every slur known to man in less than 5 seconds. They turn into a mass of unreasonable wrath that can make even a pack of lions tremble in fear. I have to deal with this on a regular basis, and I am, honestly speaking, tired of it. But this, too, has something that we can dig through for, something useful for us.  

Enough of your irreverent tomfoolery, heathen

True Weight of Charity, Patience, and Kindness

Toxicity, this infuriates me. But something has been tugging my heart. When we meet these kind of people is when we realize the difficulty of charity, kindness, and patience. Some of us thinks being nice is easy and simple, being surrounded with nice people most of the time. But these three fruits are tested in us when we are encountering people that we deem as undeserving of it. 

Our capabilities of carrying the true weight of charity, patience, and kindness is tested when it doesn't come to us naturally anymore, in a sense. Being charitable to others should be something that we frequent, but it does not always come naturally. It is embedded to our minds and hearts the saying "Tooth for a tooth, eye for an eye". This is human nature.

However, our Lord Himself said in Matthew 5:46:

"For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?"

I would put an analogy here to look smart but I ain't all that. The best I could come up with is a diamond. A diamond that breaks under a certain amount of pressure is usually not truly a diamond. Love in this case, in the form of Charity, being the beautiful gem that it is, is also measured not simply by how we love a person that love us, but when it is put under pressure of those who have done wrong to us. When this gem sustains it shape, remains as bright and as whole as it is even under such pressure, then we can be assured that it is truly the valuable gem of Charity. It's not the best analogy since hardness is not the only thing that is used to authenticate a diamond, but alas, my intelligence as of now is capped to this.

Our Lord, Jesus Himself, showed us this charity even to those who made Him suffer one of the most excruciating punishment. What did He say on those that crucified Him and afflicted such immense physical suffering to us? He says to the Father to forgive them. How incredible is such love that, even in the worst moments of His life, he would still look at those that had inflicted so much suffering to Him and desire not their destruction out of vengeance, or even justice, but looks at them with the immense mercy and love that He has. He excused them! 

A Call to Imitate

As Our Lord has done, so we shall do. If Our Lord forgives even those that destroyed His flesh, why can't we shrug of a single hurtful sentence without retaliating? The Son of The Most High was mocked and He excuses them, why can't we handle a single toxic player in a competitive game with kindness? He was crucified, they crucified Him, and yet He shows mercy to them. Why can't we show mercy to those that afflicted a small, simple suffering that, compared to the giant galactical mass of God's suffering is but a speck of dust, if it's even worth a speck of dust? 

I'm not saying that its easy. It should be apparent that I struggle with this with the bombastic comment akin to a tantrum I put in the beginning of this blog. I struggle with this a lot, and that's okay. If you struggle with this a lot as well, that's okay! Virtue takes more than a day to build! But we have to try. Start small. Show kindness to someone we deem annoying. For you that play competitive games, try and be nice to a toxic player once when you get the chance. For you that has an annoying co-worker, buy them coffee. Slowly we will be able to show kindness to those that hurt us aplenty. Take our pride and tame it. Strangle it if needed through self-mortification. 

Me vs My Pride as a daily struggle 

That's my cup of thoughts for the day after internally fuming over cuss words being shoved down my ears every 3 minutes. Alas, can't say I haven't been like that myself. 

I got more classes to attend at the time of finishing this article. Until next time, hope you enjoyed today's Cup of Thoughts. God love you. You should love Him and your neighbors too. 

  Making this was a great use of free will