We not only changed city; we changed continent; from Europe to America.
Here, we spoke French, too.
Well… a certain kind of French. With a different accent, and even different words.
That’s when, for the first time of my life, I felt different : my last name became a source of laughter, my height was ridiculed, and my way of speaking was a target for mockery. Even my ability to read, write, and count—skills I was proud of at five years old—were dismissed as weird by my peers.
I had come to understand that being different meant being the target for cruel words… and, sometimes, physical assaults..
One day, I came back home in tears.
My mom stopped everything to understand what had happened.
You have to know this about my mother: she has a Buddhist soul!
She believes in the beauty of love, compassion and forgiveness.
She appreciates our differences, values our tolerance and understanding.
So, even though God isn’t what she chooses to believe in, she’s the best model I could have of what love embodies.
Facing my desperation, she gave me a piece of understanding that has guided me since: everybody’s looking for love and happiness.
No matter what people are doing, they’re always trying to fulfill a need, or a desire, in the hopes of being happy.
"The problem," she explained, "is that they don’t realize being mean won’t lead to happiness. Worst, they don’t even know they’re unhappy! You see them laugh, play and dance, and you think they’re happy, but if they truly were, they wouldn’t act like that. But they don’t even know."
She asked me, "Would you do something like that to someone else?"
Of course not!
"You wouldn’t because you know it isn’t loving. Can you imagine the darkness that must fill a heart to act that way? That’s why you can feel compassion for them, even though it’s difficult. They are suffering, you know."
And I remembered, from the book I’ve read a few years ago, Jesus saying that we have to forgive others because “they don’t know what they’re doing”. That’s exactly what my mother was saying: they simply don’t know. Don’t know what love is, don’t know how to be happy… which is sad, if you think about it. Everyone deserves to know Love.
But then, some questions remained:
Does God allow people to behave like that? Why?
Will It punish them? Forgive them? Love them anyway?
And me? Why me?
Why, if I believe in Love, and practice being loving, should I be the target to some mean kids?
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