I know, because people call and write to me about all kinds of stuff. Well, not me-me, Editor-me.
This week, I spoke with a woman on the phone who was wondering where a
local charity gift shop had gone to when she wasn’t looking (Stamford, Conn).
“While I have your ear,” she added, “Why does the town do such a bad job of
decorating for the holidays, and why don’t we decorate the Village Green with what we used to call a Christmas tree? I guess we'd have to call it an 'evergreen' tree.” She went on to tell me that Greenwich, Conn
does a much better job of decorating (I live there and she had no need for my
reasonable thoughts on the subject), and wanted me to give her the phone number
of the local Chamber of Commerce so that she could lodge a complaint. I gave her the email address of its president.
The woman got out of bed mad, stayed that way, and I couldn’t
reason with her.
How did the world get so wrong?
I’m willing to bet that this woman has one or two fairly
simple solutions to the terrorist crisis that has most of us in its grips. She
hadn’t realized a shop had been moved to a better place months ago, that someone had worked hard
on decorating the trees despite her disappointment, and that I wasn’t a 411-informaiton operator, but I’ll
bet she has an answer to immigration and rampant, religious-based mass murder, and
a few other problems to boot.
How did the world get so messed up?
I don’t pretend to have a solution to our current
predicament with regard to the fanatical addiction to mass murder and inflicting
fear into the minds and hearts of those who live in more tolerant cultures.
But I say this – it couldn’t hurt if, while we’re dealing
with our personal and collective fears, to practice kindness to others who
might be going through the same thing. It couldn’t hurt to forgive the driver
in front of me for not using turn signals, the cop who gave me a parking ticket
because I left my permit home, or the potential buyer who passed on my 1997 gem
of a Jeep, just when I thought he was going to take it off my hands.
We may not have a simple answer to how we got here or how we
get somewhere else, where all the fear and killing stops. But, honestly, do we
think it makes things better to be so consistently unkind, intolerant, greedy,
dismissive, rude, aggressive, and to make everything about me, me, me with people who are standing/sitting/lying right in front of us?
I think not.
I hope the woman to whom I spoke on the phone gets a huge
hug today when she least expects it – and doesn’t have the hugger arrested. I
hope Charlie finds another, better vehicle for his son, and that it doesn’t
turn lemon before my Jeep would have. I hope that driver on I-95 who didn’t
signal gets behind other drivers all day long who signal every turn and pay the
tolls for him/her.
And I hope the next person who doesn’t live up to my
expectations for whatever preconceived reasons I have set, despite possibly not
having ever laid eyes on them, is kind enough to forgive me in advance.
It couldn’t hurt to strike kindness into the hearts and
minds of those we might never see again.
Amen. Thank you Tom. My mother always believed that kindness was the most important quality in a person. Its no wonder that even in her deep dementia, she still radiates that quality to all. It makes the giver and receiver feel infinitely better, and it doesn't cost a penny.
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