There are several ways to define or categorize cruelty



There are several ways to define or categorize cruelty. According to , cruelty is willfully causing or enjoying someone else’s pain. For the longest time, I thought I understood the concept. The definition is pretty clear. It’s not defined as hurting someone’s feelings accidentally or feeling guilty afterward. Until earlier this year, I would have accepted this definition of cruelty without a second thought. Not anymore. The word has taken on a completely new meaning.

In January, my uncle was diagnosed with Hepatitis. I sat in Fuel on a Wednesday evening finishing a turkey sandwich when my sister told me the news. For a minute, the chatter that filled the room faded and I felt like my world had stopped turning. At the same time, however, I wasn’t truly shocked by the news. After all, 30 years of heavy drinking and smoking isn’t exactly the best way to treat one’s liver. But I was still saddened by the diagnosis and I feared for his life.

At first, the doctor’s thought my uncle had Cirrhosis and needed an immediate transplant to save his life. Due to his alcoholism, however, he wouldn’t be placed on a donor list. My mom and her siblings were more than willing to get tested to see if they could sacrifice parts of their livers. Fortunately, that became unnecessary with the revised diagnosis a week later. But for those unbelievably slow and painful seven days, I thought my uncle was going to die without a new liver. His excessive drinking habits screwed up his liver and we were going to be the ones paying for it if the alcoholism killed him. That’s when cruelty took a new form in my mind.

My uncle’s actions were completely his own, but there was an undeniable chance that those choices were about to rob our family of him. Losing a loved one to alcoholism, that’s cruel. Watching that person deteriorate knowing nothing can be done, that’s beyond cruel. And never once did he think his drinking would hurt other people so much.

The good news is we got lucky with his new diagnosis; the doctors told him that if completely quits drinking, he should be fine for at least 10 years. Obviously, that brought each of us a sense of relief. I felt like I could finally breathe again when I heard that he was going to be okay. Still, he gave us quite the scare. As a result of the whole experience, I’m more conscious than ever of the decisions I make and how, even in obscure ways, they could impact the people I love.

I think was a little off in their definition. People can cause pain or commit acts of cruelty without meaning to and it still hurts just the same. Had my uncle’s diagnosis not changed, we would’ve most likely lost him, all because of his poor life choices, all because of his decision to have “just one more” every night. The seemingly independent choice he made to drink excessively for all those years would’ve shattered the hearts of all who know him. Even though he never had the intention of causing us pain when he drank, losing him would have hurt us regardless.

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