Small Kindness

Small Kindness

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs and let you by.
Or how strangers say "bless you" when someone sneezes, a left over 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 coffee hot, and 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 hands us the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick up 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."

   - Danusha Laméris