kindness

What a difference small acts of kindness make to our lives, and our view of being alive. When I was in Scotland and blogging in April, I remember adding in to my posts snippets from Radio 4 programmes that I was listening to on the long drive north; one of these was a phone-in dedicated to people publicly thanking strangers who'd helped them, then gone on their ways anonymously. By the end of the fifteen-minute slot (I think it was), driving through Glasgow as I was (and I'm not at my best in city driving, perpetually over-stimulated by everything), I was weeping enough to have to peer really hard to make sure I took the turn for the Erskine Bridge and Loch Lomond instead of ending up in Gourock on the wrong bank of the Clyde.

Yesterday, looking through a book of poems to read a handful to my regular group, I re-met this poem and thought I'd post an excerpt. Reminds me of Kahlil Gibran's words on allowing sorrow to carve deeply enough into your being that joy has somewhere to reside.

*
 
from 'Kindness'

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.



Naomi Shihab Nye

from the abridged Staying Alive, ed. Neil Astley