Passing on the Kindness

Tomorrow is my 3/4 (of a 100) birthday and also International Women’s Day. I have been asking my friends and relatives to help me celebrate it by passing on kindness. And they are in turn asking others and passing on kindnesses. Anything large or small, though small can be large, so a smile is often a big thing. Smiling with a mask on is not quite the same but one can tell you are smiling from your eyes and the wrinkles that form.

So I am asking you wherever you may be to join in ….write to someone you haven’t seen for a while…let someone go in front of you in the queue. Listen to a child …Listen. Be kind to yourself.

Here are the first lines of a moving poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet.

Kindness

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.

You can read the whole poem here at Poetry.Org.

You can read about Naomi and her poetry here