Kindness is Not Random

This afternoon I witnessed something so simple and good that it almost didn't register.

I was waiting in line at a fast-food drive-through and saw a man going through the trash on the restaurant's patio looking through the discarded bags. Just as I realized what the man was doing, a well-dressed woman opened the door and asked the man if he was hungry.

'Would you like something to eat?' she asked. The man nodded mutely.

I've bought many a meal for panhandlers who have asked me for money for food. I started doing this almost 20 years ago after my father told that no one had EVER taken him up on that offer. I think I just wanted to point out that some people who say they want money for food really are hungry. Plus it just pisses me off that so many people go without food in the richest country in the world.

When I pulled up to the restaurant's plate-glass window I caught the woman's eye and mouthed a thank you. She smiled and waved, probably without having any idea what I was saying. But I just wanted her to know how much I appreciated her effort to salvage what she could of that man's dignity. We should all be so kind.

Peace at Last

A strange feeling has overtaken me in the past day or so.

It feels like serenity.

It's such an unfamiliar feeling that I damn near didn't recognize it. But there it was - an undeniable feeling of happiness and gratitude, the certainty that everything is going to be okay no matter what.

This strange feeling even survived a very trying day today. Things that would normally drive me batshit just couldn't touch me.

Tonight, as I was walking down Sunset Boulevard with the dogs, listening to the Beatles on my headphones in the gathering dusk and watching a jetstream scratch across the pink western sky, an overpowering feeling of joy settled over me.

I don't know how long it will last. I'm just happy it's here.

The Tao of Trust

I've been reading the Tao Te Ching a lot lately, and it has a lot to say about trust. 'Who does not trust enough will not be trusted.' 'If you don't trust people, you make them untrustworthy.'

I have a hard time trusting people. Not my handful of close friends - I trust them with my life. But I seem to enter a lot of other relationships with the expectation of being let down, which is what invariably happens.

I'm guessing that's the kind of outcome predicted by the Tao, but I'm not sure those people would be any more trustworthy had I trusted them.

I trusted Dear Husband even though he raised fairly regular red warning flags. But I often wonder if deep down I knew the truth about him but chose to be blinded by love.

The truth is that underneath my jaded hipshot shell, I'm like an abused puppy who wags my tail at everyone regardless of how I've been treated in the past. My latest untrustworthy, a middling-intuitive man who sees himself as the spiritual equivalent of John the Baptist, told me I'm like a little girl who walks up to everyone with my heart in my hands and begs them not to hurt me.

This unflattering portrait stung all the more deeply because I know how true it is.

Which is clearly why I developed my faux-tough outer shell to begin with - in a weak attempt to protect my soft innards. I'm a little ashamed of how obvious this has been to everyone but me. And how ineffective - I can't even count the number of near-mortal wounds my tender insides have weathered.

So I guess I need to work on softening my outside and toughening my insides. But dismantling a decades-old defense mechanism is a big job. I'm not even sure where to start.

And as much as I try to hide that hopeful little girl inside of me, I hope I never lose her.

I see her in my favorite passage from the Tao about trust:

'He trusts those who are trustworthy;
He also trusts those who are not trustworthy;
For love is trust'