Gratitude Monday: Smile and be gentle

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 16^th 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.