no such thing as a small act of kindness

I’m in a little poetry group with a few women. We each share a poem we’ve found (or written) and talk about it. Invariably, the poems are thought-provoking. My friend Ella recently shared Ellen Bass’s “If You Knew.” The poem touched me and I thought of sharing it in a blog post. In light of an event that followed a few days ago with this friend (which I’ll share below), I figure it’s time for me to write that blog.

The poem is about something we all know; however, looking at the world, it may appear that we don’t. Maybe, if we remembered that we knew, life would be different?

Here’s the poem to read and then to listen to (below), read by the author.

If You Knew
Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

From The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Bass.

Fragile and Fleeting, “Pinned Against Time”

Ellen Bass’s words have made me rethink how transitory our lives are, how fragile and fleeting, how important even the smallest act of recognition can be. And how important it is for us to see each other for the very humble human beings that we are, other people not much different from ourselves. No matter the packaging, we’re all mortals, vulnerable creatures bound by the laws of nature, “pinned against time.” Kindness matters, a lot.

[I will never forget the pauper’s grave scene towards the end of the 1984 movie Amadeus, about the demise of Mozart. What a stark reminder. Or in the words of Thomas Gray in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard“: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”]

There are times that we’re all less than our ideal selves, impatient, dismissive, rude, etc., unthinking and uncaring how our behaviour is landing for someone else. Then there are times that we’re sensitive, quick to feel and judge another’s “hurtful and dismissive” ways.

What makes the difference are the times we feel unexpectedly warmed by another person’s smiling eyes or grateful not to be honked at when we’ve made some dumb mistake while driving.

The Event that Happened with My Friend Ella

Earlier this week, Ella and I arranged to meet at Willows Beach in Oak Bay, Victoria. It was June 1st and a super hot day. Ella approached and, pointing to a man lying in the sun, said, “You’ll never guess what just happened. I found a deceased man.” I approached a little ways, any closer and I felt I’d be violating holy space. We waited for emergency personnel to arrive. Ella is a nurse. She had not run her finger tips along the life line of the man’s palm; rather, she’d tried to take his pulse. He was gone already, apparently long gone. Elderly, he died of natural causes it was later determined.

Still, I wondered what his last day on earth was like. Had he spoken with his kids? Exchanged niceties with someone else at this beautiful place? Was he sad, or content? What would he have thought of the gargantuan efforts paramedics engaged in to bring life back to his body? (Yes, they had to do that, but somehow I couldn’t help feeling it was disrespectful.)

Kindness matters, and so do its cousins, patience, respect, compassion, forbearance. (I recall a song title from long ago, “Try a Little Tenderness.”) It’s worth reminding ourselves, every day, more than once. And it starts with displaying all those qualities to ourselves. How different would the world be? What do you think? Comment section is below.

(If you liked this message, please be sure to read my other post called Walking Each Other Home.)