We Should Be Kind

The hustle has made us bitter.  It’s jaded our perspectives and it’s made us cruel. It’s given us pedestals and sometimes soapboxes and it’s tipped our noses up in the air. We’ve done it, we’ve made it, and for that it’s convinced us we are better. The role, the title, the office, the things that make us superior. They’ve made us intellectuals, a cut above the rest, even though we watch The Bachelor behind closed doors and only read books that have been made into movies.

When did we become the things we said we would never be?

There’s not enough help in this world for the newcomers. The ones from other cities, schools, jobs, and lands. We stomp them out. We shame their eagerness and curiosity. We blame them for giving us more problems than we had the day before. Where are the hands? The helping ones, not the ones pushing toward the burnout. Where are the mentors we said they needed, the role models they were promised? The keepers of the keys.

Why don’t we encourage the ones behind us? Why do we make them seek us like hidden treasures only to be discovered by the worthy and determined. They are worthy and determined and we are not treasures. We are them in five years, maybe four, when life has made us angry and we’ve lost track of what exactly it is we set out to do when we were young and new.

We are tired. We role our eyes every time a new sprout pops from the soil. They remind us of when we were fresh and green, and we think “not another one,” or “they won’t last long.” We all have. But we shouldn’t. We should praise them for even daring to break ground because this air is icy and we make no effort to share warmth. We should scream “WELCOME” and applaud when they bloom. We should tell them what a pure privilege it is to be here, to do what it is we do.

These are the ones who come next. The ones who need our help, our advice, our stories of the times before. These are the ones who simply want to know “how?” It’s not a ridiculous question. There are no ridiculous questions, or at least this is what they’ve been told. Soon they’ll see this too was a lie. That a silly question does exist and depending on the day and the person and the mood, they’ll find themselves in the wake of its uncomfortable consequence. They’ll see that the musings of childhood are things to be dashed away in this new territory. There is no time for dreaming here. There is only the way things are, with practicality and bills and salaries that tick slightly higher once a year. Twice if you sell your soul.

We should be kind. To the ones waiting in the wings, stepping in our footsteps. Why make footsteps if not to be a guide? A map of where to wander, a sign of where not to step. We should tell them what we know and teach them to use it. We should be unselfish and helpful and giving. We should be kind.

But we won’t. We won’t because the world is small and the stakes are high. The stakes that were built generations before we arrived, the stakes we don’t have time to take down. We won’t because there are too many of us here doing what it is we do and we can’t bear to do anymore. There simply isn’t time. We won’t because if everyone notices them, they’ll forget about us. They won’t notice what we’ve worked for or the things we’ve done. Like an only child presented with a new sibling, we’ll turn the cold shoulder and approach the new life, the trespassers, the newcomers with caution for fear they’ll steal our toys.