My Journey With Health And Fitness – Where Has Kindness Gone

I decided to join the online strength class this morning. No, the ankle is still not where I need it to be but I figured the strength class would be a good test for what I can tolerate. While there was the occasional twinging going on it wasn’t too bad and I admit I felt so much better for working out. Next I’m going to try a gentle walk for up to an hour. I am keeping things on the light side until the swelling has completely gone but if I can do some walking this week without irritating my ankle I will be happy.

I confess that I am a bit obsessed with X (formerly known as Twitter). I tend to focus on politics both in Canada and in the USA and can often be heard shouting at my iPad screen. As things like wars have been added to the mix I started following what I call happy posts, usually involving Corgis but also other animals. These help me look at posts that aren’t quite so disturbing as some that I see.

The other day I was scrolling through X and a post popped up with a picture of a large woman who appeared to be a nurse taking care of a patient. The poster said the following ‘any person who looks like this has no business giving health advice or medical care of any kind’. WTF!!! Who the hell does this person think they are. Publicly body shaming anyone is NEVER acceptable! The poster has no idea about this persons life or what lead to her size. As someone who was obese I didn’t need others to shame me, I could do enough of that on my own. So let’s push it to a whole new level and get the world to comment on someone’s size. Please tell me how we got to a society that people think this is ok.

It made me question where did kindness go? Why couldn’t the poster look at that picture and see what I saw, a dedicated health care worker taking care of her patient. Why couldn’t they be thankful that a caring person was looking after someone’s parent, grandparent, sibling, child or friend? To me that is what the picture was about not the size of the care giver. I’m glad I have not developed so much cynicism in my heart that I can’t still look for the good in people.

The post made me think of my brother’s wound care nurse who is a sweet Jamaican lady. She also happens to be quite large but neither my brother nor I care about that. You see my brother just spent nearly a year with her being treated for a diabetic ulcer. I was very concerned about coming to the condo for 7 weeks and another one happening or the one being treated still needing work. This lovely lady heard my concern and sent a huge amount of medical supplies for us to bring with us just in case. She also made sure my brother fully understood what he is to look for on his foot and how to immediately treat it. That is kindness and caring and has absolutely nothing to do with her size.

For the poster here’s something for you to think about, there is a shortage of health care workers across the globe including North America. Do you really believe your post helps recruit and retain these workers?

And so I say we all focus on finding the kindness in this mixed up world, look for the good and don’t criticize people based on their looks. Funny, I find that when I do this the world looks a little better even if it is only for a short time.