An Act of Kindness

I saw this meme that said “Each and every day perform an act of kindness, and by doing so you can make a difference.”

It reminded me of this sequence of moments that I will never forget.

Years ago, when I was about 20 years old, I remember boarding a plane to Barcelona. I sat in my seat and casually watched as people slowly paused and shuffled past. Mundanely waiting for the person in front of them to put their bags in the overhead, everyone blankly stared ahead or at the floor in unison, before we could lose ourselves in our handheld technologies.

Down the aisle, I saw this beautiful elder woman. Long, chestnut brown hair, that was modestly tied behind her head and a vibrant red shawl around her shoulders.  In this very mundane moment, of waiting to get to her seat, I noticed something different about her.  As she slowly processed down the aisle, she took that moment to look at the person sitting directly to her left or right with great intension and ease. She gazed into these stranger’s eyes, with an immense well of loving kindness seeping out of her. In the way a mother would adoringly look at their child or the way two old bosom friends would look at each other when all the feels are there and none of the words are present. Easily, powerfully and yet compassionately, she held that moment for nearly a full minute at times, and I watched these strangers melt into the moment, totally unafraid to share it with her.

One after another I watched her do this as she slowly moved down the aisle, taking every moment to share herself generously, speak boldly without words, and give whole heartedly to a complete stranger. In my heart of hearts, I knew that she was silently blessing them.

As she approached closer, my heart began to race. Would she pick me? Would I be the one to share this moment with her? If she did, could I hold that moment in completion and not feel the urge to dart my eyes away due to my own discomfort? Would I be a coward?

Well low and behold, it was our fate that she would choose me. And as she left the gaze from a woman across the aisle from me, her eyes moved to mine next. She did nothing but lovingly smile at me, and in that moment, I felt like everything was ok. A silent reassurance of safety. I wasn't challenged by this intimacy, and instead felt like I could easily sit in it for a while, allowing the world to drift away as she kept me in her stare. Time seemed to slip, she took a step and was now gliding past me.  It's funny how that happens. How when you give yourself to a moment fully, time has no relevance. In reality, I'm guessing we held each other there for 30 seconds.

Well that 30 seconds changed my life.

Something about this moment, her ease, her grace, her pure intensions, her generosity, all of it, it shook me to my core. I was stunned with how much we were able to share as two strangers in this tiny blip of time.  I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and how brave she was, how free and unbiased she had been, and how generous she was with herself, completely throwing herself in these intimate and simple moments with all those around her.  How she turned a banal moment into a profound moment. How in mere seconds, she had convinced me that I wanted to be a better person. And how I questioned, how many times in a day, did I have a spare 30 seconds that I could just smile at a stranger with nothing but love? How that's all it takes sometimes to really make a difference.

This one woman

This one time

For a few seconds

Changed me. 

And I never forgot her.

Well this became my new goal. I would do my best to share myself, as she did, with total strangers in totally ordinary moments. Easy right?

WRONG. It was not easy. Not easy at all and it plagued me deeply with how not easy it was.  For YEARS, I thought about this woman, and how all I needed to do was to hold that space for someone as she did. But no matter how many times I tried, I completely failed.

At some of my better moments, I would awkwardly pop a smirk, but that only lasted a fraction of a second. At other times, I would catch eyes, try to smile and immediately dart away.

What was I so insanely afraid of? How could I be having so much difficulty with the simplest thing? What about me is so afraid of the other person, or afraid of how I was going to be perceived, or afraid of what doors I would open and become vulnerable to? Why was that an excuse for this irrational need to protect myself?

I was tormented by this, and how inadequate I was of accomplishing the simplest task. I'm a capable person gaddamnit, and yet I was this prepubescent tween in all my awkward glory.

Well 7 years later, I am sitting in my first teepee ceremony. I am blown away by these age old practices of love and communication. How no one, got away with anything inauthentic, how your business was everyone’s business, and how humbly people accepted their proverbial spanking. How their asses got schooled and they stayed grateful because they knew it was based in another’s commitment toward their well being. And after an entire night of sitting up, praying, singing and listening to stories, it was time to open up the teepee and have the water woman come in.

I watched this women haul this big pail of water into the teepee. And she sat there, crying over it. Sharing her own prayers, all that she had learned and all that she was grateful for. I watched her as her body had filled up with water, and leaked out of her eyes, not because she was sad, but because that’s what we do as women. We hold the emotion of the world, too big to be contained within words and too layered to be linear.  And sometimes when we are filled to the brim, it escapes our bodies in a beautiful release, and we are grateful that we have the physicality to aid our metaphysicality.  There was nothing more beautiful that I could ever witness, than to see her hold all of that, with no shame, or showmanship, but with complete ease and grace, holding all of that, for us. And in that moment, I suddenly knew.

This was the woman from the plane.

As ceremony came to a close, we all stood up, in a circle around the teepee. And one by one each person greeted everyone in the circle into the new day. As they made their way around the entire circle, they would exit the teepee. I watched this woman again as she slowly made her way around, approaching ever closer to me.  I  wondered if I should tell her, that I remembered her from this one moment years ago, and how much she had impacted my life. How this single instance, made me dig deep into my soul to understand my own insecurities and how I would be able to get out of my own way. How it plagued me to feel so handicapped and weak but how it empowered me to know what doing better looked like.

She finally stood in front of me, gave me that familiar smile and said “Good Morning” to which I replied, “Good morning, do you remember me? We’ve met.”  After a brief pause, and a little squinting of the eyes, she said, “Yes. I do. You were the girl on the plane to Barcelona. You were wearing these beautiful, metal dangling earrings with the silver balls on the bottom, and you had a blue cardigan on. I think that was about 7 years ago?”

…. what.

Suddenly I flashed back to that moment, and remembered, that I was in fact wearing exactly what she described.  I knew exactly the earrings that she spoke of, and they were one of my favorite pairs.

 

I was so stunned and in complete disbelief that with nearly no hesitation, she was able to remember exactly who I was, where we met, when it was that we met, and we never exchanged a single word.

And as I stood there, completely speechless and in awe, she simply took a step to the person next to me, gave them a warm smile, said “Good Morning” and kept moving down the line.

To this day I’m not entirely sure what to make of this woman and her super human powers. Perhaps she’s an angel, or perhaps when we are that present to every moment, we are able to conjure up our memories as though they are in the now.   I feel certain that I was another person in her every day world, but to me, she was something soul shatteringly powerful and to have her remember this girl, sitting on the plane in silence, 7 years later?  How did she remember me? I am certain I did not plague her thoughts as she did mine, nearly every day for years.

Today I am reminded of how much we can make an impact on those around us, with just some loving kindness.  To not be so stingy with our energy. That we have MORE than enough, to give it more freely, and that we are strong enough to combat any fears and the vulnerability that comes with it.  That it doesn’t take anything more than a few seconds of our day to make a difference in someone's life. How many seconds in a day do we have to spare?