I've been into listening to podcasts while gardening lately. I came across this poem while listening to the On Being podcast and it was so beautiful and poignant I felt I had to share this.
"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952
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 feel the truth of these words with every fiber of my being.
It's not an uplifting poem in a motivational sense. The images evoke a sense of forlorn - the staleness of life's routines, the unfairness of death, the desperation of hunger. Yet it is a poem that speaks to the heart in its gentleness and open vulnerability. It asks, "What is in you that loves at all, knowing all this?" What is love without pain, heartbreak, sorrow? It would only be an idea. To experience is to have a keen awareness of contours and distinctions, and "Kindness" draws on those contours perfectly. I love that phrase, "It is only kindness that makes sense anymore." Our world does not make any sense at all and it is our sensitivity that is the only real.