We all need of inspiration and beauty in our days.
I find beauty in words, in how they are strung together, are connected to create images, evoke an emotion, make me remember who I truly am and what I want for my life.
I re-discovered this poem recently. It caught my heart today (it didn’t the first time I read it). Maybe because I had already experienced heartbreaking sorrow and loss since then and know that I wouldn’t have gotten through it without the kindness of friends and strangers.
Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
I would love to sit with you and hear your story. Come on a storytelling journey with me so we can heal together, listen to what’s calling out for you and live inspired lives.
I hope March is kind to you, to all of us.
(This is the note I send to all subscribers to Joyful Little Note, my e-newsletter. If you want to receive email like this (as well as exclusives such as Your Heart-Crafted Life workbook and Love Letters, a compilation of book of, you guessed it, love letters), please sign up here.)
