When I held the door open last week for a mother of two toddlers, both seated in a stroller on steroids, I was performing a very small act of kindness. I recognized that look of fatigue on the mother's face. I saw, too, that she was entirely capable of navigating her children through public spaces in the over-sized stroller; but, there I was, standing right next to the door she was aiming to exit. It was natural to offer this gesture of camaraderie--mothers-in-arms, you know. So, I held the door for her, and as she accepted the gesture and passed through--obviously appreciative of the few seconds of unencumbered bliss--she thanked me and added, "That was really very nice of you."
It is a truth about the world. We often go unrecognized for our daily efforts. How could it be otherwise, right? One person's feat of courage or kindness or tireless perseverance can look to another as a simple matter of rising from one's bed at the appointed hour. I try not to seek recognition or praise or validation for the countless acts--big and small, those positively expected and those utterly volunteered--that make up my days and weeks, months and years. By and by these gestures accumulate and create my life as well as the person I have decided to be. I understand that we cannot go in search of the effect we have or have not made on people, events, the world, even though it is very human of us to do so. Occasionally, we need evidence of that mirror, the one capable of reflecting us to us.
"Vulnerable we are, like an infant," wrote St. Catherine. "We need each other's care or we will suffer."
So, when this young mother took an extra beat to return my act of kindness with another--my blessing immediately rebounded--I was wise enough to let it sink in. I allowed every part of my being to simmer in the generosity of spirit we were engaged in sharing. Simple as it was--sappy as it might sound translated here--it felt good. In a very fundamental way, it was evidence of the heart at work.
"The heart is always working," I was recently told during a guided meditation by a yoga teacher visiting from the East Coast. In light of this teacher's vocation, I got to thinking about how diligently or blindly or profoundly the heart has to work given the extremes it must survive. For better or worse. We underestimate this phrase. This visiting teacher works in Washington D.C. at the Walter Reed Medical Center. He works with veterans returning from war zones who are missing limbs and dealing with combat-related scars and other assorted great gaping holes in their lives. He is teaching them yoga and meditation, reminding them how the heart works back home in civilian life. Sometimes life does feel like the desperately futuristic world Suzanne Collins created in The Hunger Games with parents constantly imploring, "Please, not my child." Somewhere another rampage, another suicide, another random and senseless kidnapping, yet another war that makes refugees and amputees of yet another generation of children, affecting us all. Maybe there is some truth in the tired old saws: only the strongest survive, survival of the fittest, that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
And yet. There are moments like the one I experienced with the mother and her children in the simple act of opening a door. The mother's unexpected and generous response likewise opened a door in me. So this, I thought, is what a small insight feels like; this, then, an illumination. Thank our goodness, I want to say. Thank the power to be found in small kindnesses. As former detective Adrian Monk would say, "It's a gift and a curse," what our hearts are made to feel. The heart at work gives us our strength, lends power to our acts of courage, and renders us our most vulnerable when we relent and lay it bare.
In the 1997 movie Contact, made from Carl Sagan's bestselling book by the same name, a young scientist in the making, Elli Arroway, is seated at the controls of a home radio system, learning how to listen to vibrations in the airwaves. At this early moment in the story, Elli is intent on making contact with another like-minded human who is out there somewhere listening, too. As Elli begins to shows signs of impatience with this task, her father, standing nearby, is ready with a gentle reminder: "Small moves, Elli. Remember, small moves." Our hearts are always working. They are capable of big moves and grand gestures. But the big and the grand are built upon our ability to do the real, simple, hard work ever present in the smallest acts of our lives.
It is a truth about the world. We often go unrecognized for our daily efforts. How could it be otherwise, right? One person's feat of courage or kindness or tireless perseverance can look to another as a simple matter of rising from one's bed at the appointed hour. I try not to seek recognition or praise or validation for the countless acts--big and small, those positively expected and those utterly volunteered--that make up my days and weeks, months and years. By and by these gestures accumulate and create my life as well as the person I have decided to be. I understand that we cannot go in search of the effect we have or have not made on people, events, the world, even though it is very human of us to do so. Occasionally, we need evidence of that mirror, the one capable of reflecting us to us.
"Vulnerable we are, like an infant," wrote St. Catherine. "We need each other's care or we will suffer."
So, when this young mother took an extra beat to return my act of kindness with another--my blessing immediately rebounded--I was wise enough to let it sink in. I allowed every part of my being to simmer in the generosity of spirit we were engaged in sharing. Simple as it was--sappy as it might sound translated here--it felt good. In a very fundamental way, it was evidence of the heart at work.
"The heart is always working," I was recently told during a guided meditation by a yoga teacher visiting from the East Coast. In light of this teacher's vocation, I got to thinking about how diligently or blindly or profoundly the heart has to work given the extremes it must survive. For better or worse. We underestimate this phrase. This visiting teacher works in Washington D.C. at the Walter Reed Medical Center. He works with veterans returning from war zones who are missing limbs and dealing with combat-related scars and other assorted great gaping holes in their lives. He is teaching them yoga and meditation, reminding them how the heart works back home in civilian life. Sometimes life does feel like the desperately futuristic world Suzanne Collins created in The Hunger Games with parents constantly imploring, "Please, not my child." Somewhere another rampage, another suicide, another random and senseless kidnapping, yet another war that makes refugees and amputees of yet another generation of children, affecting us all. Maybe there is some truth in the tired old saws: only the strongest survive, survival of the fittest, that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
And yet. There are moments like the one I experienced with the mother and her children in the simple act of opening a door. The mother's unexpected and generous response likewise opened a door in me. So this, I thought, is what a small insight feels like; this, then, an illumination. Thank our goodness, I want to say. Thank the power to be found in small kindnesses. As former detective Adrian Monk would say, "It's a gift and a curse," what our hearts are made to feel. The heart at work gives us our strength, lends power to our acts of courage, and renders us our most vulnerable when we relent and lay it bare.
In the 1997 movie Contact, made from Carl Sagan's bestselling book by the same name, a young scientist in the making, Elli Arroway, is seated at the controls of a home radio system, learning how to listen to vibrations in the airwaves. At this early moment in the story, Elli is intent on making contact with another like-minded human who is out there somewhere listening, too. As Elli begins to shows signs of impatience with this task, her father, standing nearby, is ready with a gentle reminder: "Small moves, Elli. Remember, small moves." Our hearts are always working. They are capable of big moves and grand gestures. But the big and the grand are built upon our ability to do the real, simple, hard work ever present in the smallest acts of our lives.
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