A friend calls to see how I am doing. A stranger gives me a warm smile when I take my afternoon walk. My husband shares a joke he has just read while we fix dinner together.
These acts of kindness lift my spirit, and I am reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness.”
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 save,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness….
Then, it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.
–Joy