small Mila and loving-kindness

When Mila turned nine, her uncle told her what he said was a secret. "To make your magic stronger, you must train the breadth of your empathy as well as its strength," he had said. "You want to be strong, don't you?"

Mila nodded vigorously.

"Then, starting next week, we shall begin."

And so - following his instructions - every day, before dawn and after dusk, she practiced feeling love and kindness towards her family, and towards herself, and then slowly expanding the circle. People who'd petitioned the royal court that day. People she saw from her carriage window as she passed them on the street. The children who lived in her city. And every day she became stronger.

Her uncle had told her that she would aim to eventually extend that kindness to cover the whole world. But then one day he was lost at sea, so she was left by herself to puzzle out how.

She didn't just want to extend her love like a vague bubble. She wanted to make sure she could practice her love towards absolutely everyone. So who didn't she love yet?

She snuck out one night, tying a cloth around her face to hide her identity, and cracked open the door to the local jail. There, she asked why the prisoners had committed their crimes. Not all were forthcoming, but a cutpurse confessed to having eight brothers and sisters his mother could not provide for, and a killer admitted to his white-hot fury that someone had disrespected his wife. She left the jail as quietly as she came. She concluded that even the ones who were guilty had reasons for their actions, even if they were obscure and difficult to find, and so she practiced love for them, too.

Then she realized: she was the princess. She had more than many people did, and so she had many things to give to the people she strained her heart for.

She gave as much of the royal banquets as she dared to the people who came to the back gate of the castle and begged, because they deserved the food at least as much as she did. And she looked at their pinched cheeks, and decided that no, they needed it more. But then her father caught her only eating half her portions, and told her that she was still young and needed to grow. He told her she needed to value herself, as the kingdom's princess, and then put her in touch with a distant cousin who ran a soup kitchen.

"We have empty quarters in the south servant's wing," Mila said to her father, another day. "Can we please please please give them to someone homeless? There are so many homeless." Her father sighed.

Instead, he found a few people who were escaping the spouses who beat them - who were not homeless, at least not yet, but needed somewhere for a few months to put themselves back together and start a new life. And her father found her puppies who had been born on the streets, who could become true companions if they were shown love when they were still young. It was almost as good. But only almost.

She still practiced loving everyone she could, every morning before dawn and every evening after dusk. Sometimes she thought that maybe there was some group she was still missing, some people she wasn't empathizing with. But she was still a sheltered young princess, and so she couldn't figure out who.