Kindness and Sorrow

It’s so good to see everyone in the store again! With the new ritual of wearing masks and hand washing upon entry, having folks again in the retail area makes us grin ear to ear. I’ve relearned how important kindness is and how you, our customers, demonstrate this in your visits to our store. Small actions like holding the door for someone or letting an elder checkout first – it may appear as politeness but I think it’s a reflection of a deeper caring and awareness of our own humanity.

The following poem captures the nature of kindness and fits these times. Enjoy.

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 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 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
ike a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye in  Words Under Words: Selected Poems