Gratitude 11

I am sometimes grateful for other people.  I am thinking here of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous saying that "Hell is other people."  Well, Gentle Reader, as soon as I've taken the bread out of the oven and returned from the local Shoppers with the weekend Globe and Mail we will look into this, shall we?   By the way, yes I do bake bread every Saturday morning.  One hundred percent whole wheat.  I use baking powder so it bakes quickly.  One loaf lasts me the entire week.  It is heavy, thick, delicious, earthy, and richly nutritious.  I have also taken to reading the Globe and Mail weekends.  I did read it daily, then promptly quit shortly before the then editor-in -chief arrogantly announced that it was a newspaper primarily for the wealthy and that poor folk such as myself needed not to bother with enriching their minds with quality journalism.  This smug little douchebag is gone now and the current editors seem to have a little more humility.  But it has become criminally expensive so it is just the weekend edition these days.  It really helps make my weekend.  I also enjoy the brief outing just to see people in the neighbourhood, say hi to a couple of strangers as well as the cashier at the Shoppers Drugmart.  This morning in the elevator I also had the opportunity of meeting the new assistant manager of my apartment building.  He seems very pleasant.  But this is what I mean about being grateful for other people.

It's Saturday morning, by the way, at 9:30 and this is my day off, Nothing Day, El Dia de Nada.

Now it is 5:19 pm and I have read a bit about Sartre.  I can better understand, I think, why he would say that hell is other people: in his dealings with imbeciles throughout his long and illustrious career, of course he would say this.  Who wouldn't?  I am not always inclined to agree, for the simple reason that no matter how stupid, ignorant, destructive, murderous, selfish and badly behaved we can be, we all still need one another.  This is part of the human paradox.  We want to be free, independent and unencumbered by others.  That is, until we need them, which happens pretty darn often.  Have you ever had a cat for a pet?  I have, and I'm sure you get the idea.

I can suggest here two personal experiences of benefiting from the kindness of strangers:

In 2012, in San Cristobal de las Casas, a colonial city high in the mountains in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, I fell suddenly and drastically ill one morning.  I passed out in the hotel dining room and as I came to I was surrounded by no less than half a dozen concerned, caring and compassionate Mexicans.  All supporting and encouraging and rallying me as they sent for help.  The kindness shown by those people, the hotel staff and the doctor in the clinic remain engraved on my memory and has deepened my love for the Mexican people.

Here at home, three years ago, near my home, I was tripped by a young First Nations man for no reason other than I was trying to get in front of him and his two friends, all smoking cigarettes, so I would no longer be inhaling their toxic second hand smoke.  I did excuse myself as I squeezed by (they left almost no room for me to pass) and I was polite.  I think this guy hated white people and, yes, I do treat this assault as a hate crime.  I fell on the pavement, injured and cut open my knee and people around me who saw what happened yelled at him to come back, apologize and man up about what he did.  The coward didn't of course, and I did have to involve police.  When he was apprehended I asked that charges not be laid, for the simple reason that especially for an aboriginal, that kind of mark against him could be deadly.  Still, the kindness and concern that those bystanders expressed was heartening and for me an urgent reminder that we are all in this together.

I cannot state openly nor clearly enough how essential we are to one another.  As horrible and evil as we can be we are still indispensable to one another.   We are angels as well as devils.  This isn't just in our utility or our usefulness, but simply in our being present to one another.  I have heard some of the people I work with who are struggling towards mental wellness how important it is for them sometimes just to be out in public among other people.  They feel less alone and even the presence of strangers for them is reassuring.

I have no argument with Monsieur Sartre.  Sometimes, even frequently, hell is other people.  I trust that the great existentialist philosopher has also considered that maybe on occasion that for other people he could also be hell?

It is sometimes just a simple matter of whether we nourish and nurture in our human nature the darkness...

Or the light.