And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up.
On the value of small kindness
Hi guys! I hope you are doing great. Lately, a lot of my energy has been going into fulfilling a number of responsibilities (which I very much brought on myself by the way) with very little time or motivation left to do anything of my own. I still manage to sneak reading a few pages of a book in the morning (or night), and I look forward to going to the gym on weekends because, somehow, it gives me the strength + energy + clarity I need to take on a new week. But today was particularly distressing as I was too worn out from the week that I could barely go through half of my usual routine, which left me even more sad and defeated.
Although my tired body says otherwise and deep down, I just want to watch The Big Bang Theory till I fall asleep, I’m showing up here typing aggressively on my keyboard at 10:53 pm because the agenda must agend.
So, here’s a poem I thought to share with you by Danusha Laméris on the value of small kindness.
"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.”
Source: James Clear Newsletter
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Have a fantastic week!
Yosola.