Small Kindnesses

by Danusha Laméris
from The Writer's Almanac

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here,
have my seat," "Go ahead—you first," "I like your hat."

---

All of which has me thinking about the person who waved me through the stop sign ahead of my turn, the other driver who gave me a thumbs-up instead of a wave as I let her merge on the highway, the child who said "hello, mister" when I passed him on the sidewalk, the elderly neighbor who drags my empty garbage can up my driveway while we're all out at work, the colleague who placed a jar of fresh jam on my desk after we had talked about her berry picking, the friend whose letter arrives in my mailbox, the friend of my daughter who thanked me so politely for dropping him off at his house and for going all of two blocks out of our way, the woman who told me how lovely my email was excusing the late shipment of something I had ordered, the secretary who told me to have a blessed day, the woman who teared up when I asked if her niece was recovering from surgery, the dog's tail as I handed her a piece of cheese, my daughter's mumbled "I love you too" last night before bed, my wife's gentle kiss on my forehead when anxiety eats at me, and the memory of my father somehow telling me without words that there is more good in this life he has left than bad and I might as well notice all that wonder.

Just One Thing?

I'm supposedly listening to an album. The Cars' first album. Friends and I were talking about it last night and then I was going through my records and saw it there. It belongs to another guy who doesn't have his turntable any more but kept his albums. Turns out that The Cars' first album is good. It's from a whole range of music I discounted in my youth because I wanted to seem superior to pop. I'm a bit less foolish now.

But this isn't about The Cars, it's about listening to an album, the thing I'm supposedly doing. I listened to the first and a half but a book on my shelf — The Art Of Noticing by Rob Walker — caught my eye and I picked it up. I had read eight pages before I remembered listening to the album. The record was still spinning, music still played from the speakers, but was I listening?

I put the book down, intent on listening, but kept thinking how this was something I wanted to write. I booted the computer into the writing program and typed until the record ran out, then got up, flipped it, and wrote while the music played.

There are two old Zen things I have just wasted two songs trying in vain to find. The first, I'm pretty sure is a Zen saying, but the second is something else entirely.

The First: When drinking tea, one should only drink tea.

Focus on one thing. Be in the moment. Meditate on it. Really listen to The Cars first album instead of reading or writing. I've failed at this, but there's this second thing.

The Second: A monk watched his master drinking tea and reading the newspaper. Master, he asked, you said when drinking tea, one should only drink tea? The master paused, then said, when one is drinking tea, one should only drink tea. And when one drinks tea while reading the newspaper, one should do only those things. With that, the master went back to reading the paper, steam rising from his cup and disappearing mysteriously in the morning air.

I'm going back to listening to The Cars now.

For The Greater Good

John Tumino does good work and is kind. He runs In My Father's Kitchen and spoke Thursday morning about Hire Ground which helps homeless people earn money by working. The real mission, he said, is getting people to the point where they're ready to change. Paid work, good food, fresh socks, real friendship, all of these are just the means to getting people to that point.

I believe in kindness. National news is largely bad, almost hopeless, but I still believe in kindness. This morning I worked out what kindness means to me.

Kindness is dependent on caring for our neighbors, especially those less fortunate, and understanding that almost everyone is less fortunate. We make our lives better through making other lives better.

Greed, thinking mostly of ourselves, is a path to misery. Doubt that? Think greed pays? Then just try to imagine the fraction of a man in the White House ever being happy. I've never seen a more miserable creature. In my kinder moments, I pity him. The rest of the time I have other feelings about him.

Even some of his stuff might turn out good, but being kind means doing good deliberately. John Tumino does that with In My Father's Kitchen. My wife does that working with pre-school teachers, kids, and their families. You likely do that raising children and caring for aging parents. Real kindness is the result of our choices.

Sometimes doing good is draining, tiring, and seems hopeless. Yet, we still know it is good. That's why we keep doing it.

That's also why I'm not hopeless yet. I believe in kindness because the alternative is a road to suicide and because I see kindness in my world, especially in my immediate vicinity. I'm shown kindness too often not to believe.

Does kindness win in the end? Maybe, but that's a foolish question. There is no winning nor any end. We continue living together, understanding and helping one another as best we can, and standing in opposition to the politics of greed.

Go buy some pasta sauce. Invite people to dinner. Keep believing and being kind. Do it for the greater good.

Cool & Uncool

Do you have a steady boyfriend
Cause honey I've been watching you
I hear you're mad about Brubeck
I like your eyes, I like him too
He's an artist, a pioneer
We've got to have some music on the new frontier
—Donald Fagen, "New Frontier"

---

I've finished prepping dinner after bringing laundry upstairs for my wife to hang. On the speakers I'm playing the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Jazz Impressions Of Eurasia playing and there is nothing at all cool about any of this.

Back when I taught high school (all of four months ago), kids asked why I didn't wear a Gucci belt, Jordans, or whatever else they thought was cool. One kid said, "I don't know how you freaking stand being so uncool, man." (He didn't say "freaking" or "man," but the two words he used, while cool to those kids, are things I'm purging from my life).

I smiled. This was a pretty smart kid, the kind I liked and most of why I was still teaching. He smiled a little too, knowing I was about to try and teach him something. I said, "here's the best thing about getting old: you stop worrying about being cool." He nodded, then schooled me: "Yeah, you're old, but you were never cool, were you?" Touché.

I'm fifty-one and really like the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet: Desmond, Wright, Morello, and Brubeck improvising over whatever time signature no one else used. It's called cool jazz but not because the people still listening to it are cool. The cool folks are digging the newly unearthed Coltrane, the weirdly wondrous Ornette Coleman, neglected Jessica Williams, and every Miles Davis album except maybe Kind Of Blue. Look at my record collection and the largest section has Brubeck down each spine. So uncool.

That kid kind of understood. Most didn't, but he was cool in the ways that really matter. The ways I still want to be cool. He was a little bit open to things. He could be taught. He could learn. He could come to understand. He sure as hell wasn't going to listen to Brubeck and I bet wherever he is now, he's wearing a Gucci belt that isn't doing a damn thing to hold up his pants. He's cool that way too.

Me, I'm not even close. But I'm cool with that.