by Johnny Zokovitch
Life is hard. These times are hard. For people committed to the reign of God–to that reign of mercy, forgiveness, justice, compassion, peace and love–every day seems to deliver another gut punch.
The blows come from all sides. The detention and deportation of our immigrant friends and neighbors. A genocide in Gaza. Protesters being killed in the streets. The rollback of civil rights. If you ever bought into the myth of progress, you’re having that optimism severely tested right now.
Someone nearly every day reaches out to me to share how they feel like they’re buckling under the combined weight of the onslaught of social injustice and personal pain or vulnerability they’re experiencing, the first often responsible for the second.
In moments like this, I find myself endeavoring to remember: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” The saying–attributed alternately to Plato, Philo or Robin Williams according to the internet–rises so often some days that it becomes a mantra.
Most of the people I know and see regularly are fighting the good fight. They’re training people in nonviolence. They’re staffing food pantries. They’re engaged in political organizing. Or they are those experiencing firsthand the threats that this administration unleashes every day – against refugees and migrants, trans folk, the homeless and impoverished.
I think when people undergo suffering and strife, two directions open up before us. We can tend toward becoming harder, more cutting, colder in our assessments of the world at large and the individual people who cross our path. Or we can soften, encountering the brokenness of the world and our sisters and brothers through the lens of our own woundedness. Holding to that second way, I think, moves our hearts to a flowering of compassion for the hard battles that everyone, at some level, is fighting.
As a younger man, I exhibited a good deal of self-righteousness, and along with it, I was highly critical or even condemnatory of others. There was work to be done, damn it, and I was less than gentle at times with people who may have been carrying more than I was obviously aware of. But life can be a cruel teacher. Suddenly some tragedy visits, the work for a better world that was so vital to you is being demolished brick by brick; the people you serve are being targeted; emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally you’re exhausted and don’t measure up to what needs to be done.
And you realize then how much a little kindness, a little grace means. Even the smallest kindness: a smile from a passerby, a check-in call from a friend, support from a colleague, some understanding from a stranger. You search your past and try to weave together a net of all of the kindnesses you have been shown—especially the ones you did nothing to merit — hoping it will be strong enough to catch you and keep you from sliding all … the … way …. down.
Especially right now, when so much feels fraught and fragile and so many of us are working as hard as we can to stitch back together all that is unraveling, let us remember to be kind. Toward all those, including ourselves, who are sliding down, let our kindness catch them.
In these times of brokenness and devastation, even when we find ourselves with little to offer, let us remember that we are all battling, together. And the least gift we can offer, in the spirit of solidarity and understanding, is kindness. We can be kind.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.