Kindness and the Unbearable Burden

There’s a teacher from high school that I still think about from time to time. He was a PE teacher, let’s call him Mr. H.

The thing that stuck out about Mr. H was his kindness. His kindness was so intense that it was almost not to be believed. It was also a melancholy kindness. There was a touch of sadness in every smile and gesture.

I remember that I didn’t believe him at first. I thought it was an act. Mr. H was a tall and handsome man. He looked like he must have been the prom king or the star football player. He always dressed well and maintained a neat appearance.

For the first few weeks, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d seen it hundreds of times. Teachers always pretended to be nice during the first days of school, then they did something borderline psychotic. I remember huddling in fear as teachers raged at kids. In fourth grade, Mr. P even picked up the desk of one of my classmates and threw it down the stairs…

… with my classmate in it!

So, even though I wanted to believe that Mr. H was genuinely nice, I didn’t trust it, and I remained guarded.

But time went on and, as if indifferent to my skepticism, Mr. H continued to treat everyone with his intense kindness that was oddly melancholy.

Something didn’t seem right and I couldn’t leave it alone. I wanted to get to the bottom of this incongruous behavior.

I began to test him.

I was never overtly rude, but I have a quick wit and I could add subtle barbs to my statements. It’s easy to phrase responses in a way that’s borderline mean just to get a response. It felt safer to provoke him under controlled circumstances so I knew to take cover if somebody truly started acting up.

I did this with all my teachers, but Mr. H was the first one to indicate he knew what I was doing. I hit him with some kind of sarcastic comment, and he paused and looked at me with a kind but sad smile. He didn’t say anything, but it was as if he whispered, “You don’t have to do that.”

His kindness was remarkable, and I began to believe it.

He didn’t raise his voice, and when he scolded kids it was always in a soft tone with the same sentiment of “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Anytime somebody was mean or cruel, Mr. H looked deeply pained. It was as if the sound of insults hurt him more than the kids the insults were directed at.

“Please don’t do that.”

Even when kids got into fights, he didn’t lose his cool. He rushed over to stop the fight with a look of intense sadness on his face. Never anger. Always sadness.

“Be kind.”

It was incongruous to me. He held himself to such a high standard, and it didn’t make sense. He had the appearance and physique of a star athlete and Hollywood good looks. I’d never seen anyone who looked like him act the way he did. I expected him to be arrogant and proud. Instead, he was humble, unbelievably humble.

He was humble in a way that made me think that something must have happened. Something had to have caused this. It wasn’t natural.

Something wasn’t right about this guy, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

He was just… too nice.

I began asking around and eventually I found an answer. Who knows if the answer was true, or whether it was just small town gossip, but it had the ring of truth, and it explained Mr. H’s behavior.

I grew up in a rural area where kids were often obliged to help out on the family farm. Even when I was young, small kids were driving tractors before their first day of school.

Farm life is tough life, kids put in a day of work before they even go to school. Unfortunately, when children are tasked with running heavy machinery, accidents happen.

The story I heard about Mr. H was vague on the details. Apparently, he’d had a sister, and when he was very young, the two of them were out driving the tractor. Mr. H was driving. The sister fell. Mr. H couldn’t stop the tractor in time. The sister was killed.

Again, who knows if it was true? Maybe it was gossip. But maybe it happened.

The story explained him.

Mr. H was saddled with world-crushing guilt. This was a burden he had to carry with him throughout his life. By the time I’d met him, he’d reached a place of equilibrium, but the sorrow was still heavy on him.

He smiled at you with kind sadness.

He never raised his voice.

He never scolded you.

He never teased anyone, he never gave himself a moment’s reprieve from his penance.

He treated everyone with melancholy perfection, and he seemed almost out of step with the world like he was beyond human.

The odd part is that I don’t think you could say that the other students loved him. They respected him, but it was as if they didn’t know how to handle him. His example was too much. It was if they all expected him to snap at them from time to time, and they didn’t know how to react in the absence of that response.

He was an outlier. Quite and kind and indifferent to how he was perceived.

It wasn’t about ego, he was just legitimately dedicated to being kind at all times.

He existed by his own code of conduct and nothing could shake him from that path.

I remember feeling enormous pity for him. My first thought was that he’d been robbed of the life his looks and his physique should have afforded him. By rights, he should have been like any other high school football jerk…

But why did I think that?

He was so noble and so kind, why did I assume the path he was on was somehow the lesser one?

The next thing I thought was that it was a shame he had to go through such a trauma to achieve this state of universal kindness.

That’s when I realized the trauma wasn’t a necessary part of the process.

We can all choose to behave like him.

I realized, I could choose to behave like him.

Mr. H is the only teacher I ever had whose behavior I tried to model. I tried to tone down the barbs in my comments. I was always known for a quick wit, and I’d observed Mr. H listening to me from time to time. He recognized when I made a cutting comment, but he never rebuked me for it. He didn’t operate like that.

He never lectured. He never criticized. He never scolded. He just demonstrated how to behave.

When I deliberately tried to inject more kindness into my behavior, Mr. H noticed. Again, he didn’t say anything, but it was as if some of the pain I’d seen on his features was lessened. His burden didn’t go away, but perhaps it weighed less for a moment.

Or maybe it was all my imagination. Maybe the story wasn’t true. Who knows?

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But in a way, the story was true because it made me think of how I would confront the world if I carried a soul crushing burden of regret. How would I treat people if I had to endure the constant agony of guilt?

I thought about it a lot.

And I realized I could adopt those behaviors even without the guilt. They were so unique. Mr. H was unlike anyone I’d ever met. I’d never seen any of his tactics work in any other situation, but he was so sincerely committed to kindness that it provided him with an effective guidance through the obstacles of life.

I’d always hated gym class, but I decided to sign up the next year just to have more time with Mr. H. But Mr. H didn’t return the next year, he’d taken a job as a principal.

“Good,” I thought. “That’s a good job for him. He’ll help kids in that position. He’ll save some children.”

Mr. H was my teacher more than thirty years ago. I should track him down. I should tell him what an impact he made on my life. I should thank him for his kindness. He’s out there, somewhere, unaware of how much of a positive impact he made on my life. I’d like him to know.

Kindness saves us. Pass it on.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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