Greetings
all!
Someone recently commented on my cute pink hat, and
this unexpected compliment brightened my day and made me smile. A small thing but small things
tend to have a snowball effect. I then went on with my day, with my next stop being a grocery store. While I had quite a few things in my cart, a person behind me
only had a bottle of water and a banana. “You go ahead” – I said, and got a
smile in return. Have you noticed that a smile usually creates a smile in
return? It takes so little to be kind.
Image from
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris
“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you
walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in
their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still
say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,”
we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else
will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to
harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee
hot,
and to say thank you to the person
handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back.
For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down
the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up
truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now.
So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief
moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of
the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when
we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,”
“I like your hat.”
The New York Times (9/19/2019), Bonfire Opera http://www.danushalameris.com/poems.html
Only these brief moments of exchange…
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy…”
