Always Room for Kindness

When I came across this passage by Danusha Lameris, it reminded me that there is always room for kindess:

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle,

people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"

when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else

will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other. We want

to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it.

To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey

when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the 

red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now.

So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they

are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together

when we say, "Here, have my seat," "Go ahead - you first," 

"I like your hat."

- Danusha Lameris

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@meilingmirow