These are desperate times. As I sit writing, the nation is being held hostage by warring factions, conservative and progressive. It’s gotten mean. People are angry. Demagogues are ready to take advantage of the fear they’ve generated, fear that drives us to do desperate things, like give up our rights and freedoms in the name of national security.
Read MoreThe rain gutters of the buildings in my apartment complex are being cleaned this week. When I went out for my daily walk this afternoon I saw several workers walking along the roof edges of buildings, their hoses focused on the leaf-clogged gutters. After watching a few of them focused on their work, it occurred to me that I was bypassing an opportunity for walking my talk by initiating an interaction.
Read MoreI arrived at the food market early this morning in a down mood. Already overwhelmed by work calling for attention, I didn’t need another job to add to my list, but the refrigerator and cupboard shelves were looking pretty bare. “Save the self-pity,” I told myself. “At least you have the ability to replenish those shelves.”
Read MoreSince the advent of the coronavirus, many of the employees at my favorite grocery store have been replaced by strangers. But recently I was checked out by a female checker I’ve encountered many times on past shopping trips. We’ve typically engaged in casual chatter as she scanned items from my cart.
Read MoreI try to walk every day, and most of my walks include portions of the wooded trails that surround my apartment complex. Today’s walk—the one I just returned from—included a trail that terminates at a street bordering an adjacent neighborhood. Where the trail and street adjoin, there’s a covered bench backed by a bulletin board featuring neighborhood news and activities. Today, as I was coming off the trail, I noticed there was a man sitting on the bench.
Read MoreWhen Walt Whitman said in Song of Myself, “Do I contradict myself? I am large. I contain multitudes,” he was describing the human condition. Any label we pin on ourselves that casts us as being “that way” (good or bad in any of their incarnations) relegates us to the status of hero or villain in a soap opera or a comic strip.
Read MoreYou may remember that heart- and soul-satisfying final question from Bill Murray at the end of the now-classic film Groundhog Day. The question is symbolic of his character’s hard-earned transition from a self-focused, ego-serving second-rate weather anchorman to a kind and gentle person who wants only to serve others.
Read MoreI usually walk in the evening, after dinner, but today I made a different choice and headed out before breakfast. The wooded trail that threads through and around a local park was populated mostly by birds, squirrels, and rabbits, so I had it mostly to myself. But I did encounter a few other early morning exercisers and dog walkers.
Read MoreSuch a simple question, no?
Unfortunately, no. Mask or no mask seems to have become yet another way of dividing ourselves into warring camps when we really want the same thing. Health and freedom.
Read MoreI’m scared.
I’m scared because I feel inadequate to the job I’ve taken on in writing and publishing a book. I’m scared even though I’ve spent the last several years of my life transforming myself from a shy and retiring introvert to one who can go first in offering a greeting to a stranger and not take it as a personal failure if she doesn’t get a response.
Read MoreLike any animal, human or otherwise, when I’m afraid, my first impulse is to withdraw and protect myself. And let’s face it, our current situation makes us all ripe for the fear response—not just for ourselves, but for the people we love. Our “tribe.”
Because I’m afraid of the coronavirus, I wear a mask when I leave my “safe space” and go “out”—as in my forays for food in “the wilds” of my local grocery store.
Read MoreI accosted two young people today. Well, maybe not accosted, but certainly surprised them, I’m sure.
I’d been sitting at the kitchen table talking with my husband when I saw them on the sidewalk that threads its way past the clubhouse and along the edge of the center courtyard below our apartment deck. I jumped up from the table and bounced onto the deck, waving my arms.
Read MoreIt’s called COVID-19. When it announced its presence on the planet as we moved into a new decade, I was making plans for publication and a late spring release of my book Smiling at Strangers.
In the meantime, this website was being built for a world that no longer exists.
Read More“I want to connect with people, but I don’t know what to say” is probably the most frequent response I get when I’m talking with someone about initiating contact with strangers. What do you do after you’ve smiled and offered a greeting?
Read MoreWhen I decided I wanted to write a book about kindness in January of 2017, I thought it would be a quick project. I’d been writing and editing for much of my life, and I knew the book would be short. What I didn’t realize is that it would take me three years to evolve to the point where I could write something authentic and potentially useful. It required “rebirthing myself” at the age of 80.
Read MoreYou’re sitting on a shuttle bus bench squeezed in between strangers facing another bench filled with more strangers. It’s a five-minute ride from the off-airport parking facility to your departure gate. Everyone on the bus who isn’t looking at their cell phone is looking at their shoes. No one is speaking even to people they’re traveling with.
Read MoreWow, my first blog post. I don’t know where it’s going, so bear with me, Kind Soul.
I’ll start with a question. What’s important enough to you to stand in a crowd of people all waiting for something to happen, thread your way to the front of the crowd, and step forward? Heart beating like a jackhammer in your chest. Sweat pouring from your body like a garden hose. Stomach a hive of bees ready to sting if you break ranks.
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