It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling and it was almost dark . . . (but through the window) the tree was more beautiful than the one she had seen last Christmas through the glass door of the rich merchant’s home. (Andersen)
I don’t know how old I was when I first heard Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, but I do know I was probably too young for such a tragic story of poverty and death. I remember sobbing myself to sleep that night, overcome with the horror of this window into another reality.
I wanted so badly to do something about it, to fix it somehow, to make it better for this nameless little girl who froze to death that bitterly cold night. In my imagination, she was really out there, looking into my window, at my Christmas tree, and my wonderful Christmas dinner. And I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t help her, I couldn’t invite her in.
That kind of helplessness still haunts me sometimes, all these years later. One of the hardest things for me to deal with is the sense I often have that there doesn’t have to be this kind of injustice, that things don’t have to be this way, people can choose to behave better than this, that this isn’t right.
I’ve learned a lot about equanimity since that time, and I’ve learned that most people are doing the best that they can at any given moment, “walking according to the light as they see it.” I’ve learned I can be very arrogant in my self-righteous sense that I know best. I’ve learned that my reverse prejudice can be just as destructive as prejudice. I’ve learned a lot about forgiveness, for both myself and others.
But it’s hard to forget and not to see. And often I still chafe at others’ choices when I so want them to choose differently, to rise to the fullness of what could be possible for themselves and for our world.