Hello Mi Neighbour

HELLO MI neighbour! How does one help a needy neighbour afflicted by ingratitude? Without contradiction, ungratefulness is one of the worst expressions of unkindness! Present a dish of rice and peas and chicken to a dog and it will gladly and graciously gobble it up. Throw a meat bone and some leftovers on the ground and the same dog will also gladly gobble it up and be thankful. The behaviour of this creature gives credence to what research has shown: When it comes to ingratitude, some dogs are “boneless”. For sure, dogs could teach us a thing or two.

Ingratitude in others is a turn off for even people who are uncontrollably kind at heart. It’s an insult to the Creator and His creation. The Creator instructs all beneficiaries of a daily allowance of His breath – human beings – to “love their neighbours as themselves and to do unto others what they would others to do unto them”. To carry out these instructions, kindness to others becomes an imperative. But how do we show kindness to someone who cannot appreciate it? Well, well.

Funnily, many of those persons who do not appreciate our generosity are usually in dire need of it. And when their attitude of ingratitude walls them off, they are audacious enough to claim that others are mean and stingy and are unwilling to help them out of their frequent predicament. Constantly seeing themselves as the “have nots” and others as the “haves”, they seldom stop to think of the sacrifice connected with the acquisition of life’s basic necessities.

TURNING THE TABLES

But how do we really help to detox the “ingratitude addict”, with whom we are acquainted? For sure, it’s not to give them