BIASED KINDNESS

There are moments that stay with you – not because they changed your life ,but because they quietly changed the way you look at people.

One day I was walking behind a car. Without warning it lurched backward, no horn ,no glance in the mirror, no voice calling out to tell me to step away. Before I could understand what was happening , I lost my balance and fell. My knees scraped against the rough ground, warm blood slowly finding its way through my skin.

The driver looked at me , for fleeting second our eyes met. I waited for the smallest gesture of humanity -a question , an apology, a hand reaching out . Instead he drove away . I sat there , brushing dust from my clothes and pretending the sting didn’t hurt as much as it did.

The wound on my knees healed in time, but something quieter lingered beneath them. It wasn’t the fall that stayed with me; it was the silence. The realization that sometimes people can witness your pain and choose to keep moving.

Then sometimes later I saw the same man ; Again he backed into someone , but this time everything was different, he stopped immediately , stepped out , offered his hand , apologized sincerely and promised to be more careful. WHATTTTT!! , I stood there , watching ? and a question settled heavily inside me .

Why was kindness reserved for someone else? Why was my pain so easy to overlook? I pondered , was it because I smiled instead of crying ? because I picked myself before anyone could forward their hand for help? Because I quietly carried for hurt , making it easier for other to believe nothing broke at all. Did my quietness make my hurt seem smaller?

“PEOPLE PERHAPS MISTAKE RESILIENCE FOR INVINCIBILITY”

This story never happened exactly this way . Yet somehow it has happened to me countless times not with cars, but with people . With people who never thought an apology was necessary when I was the one the had wounded . It is about every time I was left on the ground while others walked away , only to watch them later offer the compassion I has once longed for,to someone else.

People assume those who do not scream are not suffering , that those wipe away their own tears need no comfort. But some wounds never ask to be seen , they simply wait hoping that one day someone will notice them without being asked .

Sometimes the deepest wound is not the hurt himself , it is the discovery that kindness you waited for was always there, they simply chose to give it to someone else. Sometimes the kindness depends on who falls and who is watching .