Day Seventeen // March 16 // The Roots of Callousness “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet –
Callouses are the rough, thickened patches on our skin that have been hardened by years of wear and work. And when we do not keep the fruit of kindness fresh, we can develop a kind of spiritual callousness. We may feel great grief and hopelessness about humanity because we are overwhelmed by bad news. It’s incessant. It’s too much. And when we don’t know what to do with it, we risk becoming numb to tragedy, veering from empathy to callousness, to a hardness of heart and mind and soul – a hardenedness that contaminates every area of our lives, leaving us feeling hopeless about everything. The danger of callousness is that it subtly creeps up on us when we are not aware. A powerful example of this occurs during Air Force pilot training sessions. In these sessions, pilots are warned about “hypoxia,” or lack of oxygen to the brain. The pilots are put in a chamber that simulates the atmospheric conditions at 30,000
