You’ll no doubt have noticed that yesterday was Mother’s
Day here in the United States. There was a lot of happy-happy stuff whizzing
around the social platforms about it, as you’d expect. But one of my friends
posted something on Facebook that went straight to my heart:
“Friends, on this Mothers'
Day, please be especially kind to every one you meet. For some people this is
an awful day—those whose relationships with their mothers are damaged or lost,
those who have lost children, those who long to have children but cannot. Smile
and be gentle today.”
Now, since I’ve made it a point of honor to practice
gratitude in the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that life is actually
easier. I mean—shit still happens, and all. But I just seem to get less worked
up about it. And that keeps me in a better mood.
Reading JT’s post, I realized that what I’m doing when I’m
out in the Valley They Call Silicon, or dealing with call center people on the
phone, or pretty much anything, is: I’m being kind—to those I’m interacting
with as well as to myself.
Get behind someone at the grocery check-out who can’t
seem to organize payment, like it’s a total
surprise that some form of money-for-goods exchange would be expected at
that point? Eh, wouldn’t want to think about what the bottom of my purse looks like…
Ready to spit nails because the Amazon vendor used USPS
for delivery and those schmucks will not
climb to the third floor to leave a package by my door so their “package
delivered” notation in the tracking system only means that the letter carrier
ticked a box rather than delivering one? Hey—Peter at the Amazon call line
turns out to live in Costa Rica and have a two-year-old boy who stays up all
hours playing videos on the iPad. That’s pretty interesting. (And he
overnighted a replacement product, because all I had to say was “USPS” for him
to know the situation.)
Walk into a Starbucks for the 3pm-to-5pm half-price Frappuccino
Happy Hour and realize that this one is a block away from a middle school, and
I’m 16th in line for my espresso Frappuccino with whipped cream (hey—I’ll walk it off on the way home)? Start a
conversation with a guy who’s buying eight drinks for the office (and
unaccountably has decided to walk in, even though this Bucks has a
drive-through). Also, meditate on the notion of pre-teens with such disposable
income that they can buy pastries and overpriced sugary drinks on their way
home from school without their moms yelling that they’re spoiling their dinner.
I have no idea whether this kindness on my part has any
effect on the people around me, or even whether they notice it. And that’s
fine, although I think that if they knew how crabby I can be, they’d appreciate not getting any of that. But I do know
that I feel much, much better about myself, my life and the world around me
because I’m not getting riled up at every instance of minor incompetency or
inconvenience. Instead, I’m using these incidents as teaching moments, looking
for how I can learn something new, even if it’s just, “Eh, don’t do that, ‘kay?”
It’s that “be kind to others because you don’t know what burdens
invisible to you that they’re carrying” that JT posted about that really makes
the difference for me. We may all be in the same physical proximity, but we’re
each in a different place in the space-time continuum. I’m grateful that I’ve
learned to cut some slack for those around me, and I’m grateful that this
brings me a gentleness for myself that I haven’t always found easily.
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