Kindness

I have a roof over my head and that of my family.
We have food on our table.
We live in relative safety.
I have some opportunities to work.
This is as good as it gets.
This is privilege.
I know that.
And yet I look out my window and I encounter people and stories
that tell me we are in very turbulent, unsettled and uncertain times.
Acceptable relations between men and women are being reset.
The nature of power dynamics are being reconsidered.
Fundamental questions like 'what does it mean to be human?' are being asked.
This is what transformation looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like and sounds like.
Maybe every generation from the beginning of time goes through this experience,
believing their moment in time is the one, the turning point.
And yet I think there is something tangibly different going on here.
The reason being is their is a collective mystery being confronted.
And what is our stance in these times?
Do we become reactionary?
Do we retract ourselves back into known territory?
Or can we offer kindness to a stranger?
Can we turn and face the  unknown and step forward?
These are questions and gestures we are going to become more intimate with.
Might I suggest more kindness.
More kindness to ourselves and more kindness to others,
especially the outsiders, the homeless and the unwanted.


KINDNESS* by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
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 gaze at 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.

*From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.