Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Why Kindness is Under-Rated

I ran across this poem yesterday, and it moved me.

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
like a shadow or a friend.
~Naomi Shihab Nye

And now today, this poem also brings the following quote to mind:
"How beautiful a day can be when kindness touches it!"
~George Elliston

I believe the ability to embrace sorrow is also the gateway to more authentic joy; for, how can you truly know one without the other? 
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."
~Khalil Gibrahn

Perhaps it is because I'm so unabashedly not afraid to be sad that my life is correspondingly filled so plentifully with joy and kindness. It's all about having an open heart. Sure it hurts sometimes, but do you really want to give up all the GOOD STUFF that you cut cut yourself off from when you start putting up walls around your heart? That seems dumb to me.

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