I recently had a horrendous travel day. I’d been down south visiting family and was set to fly back to Illinois early on Saturday afternoon. On the morning of my departure, I received a text from the airline saying my flight (which was supposed to leave around 1:00pm) would be delayed a couple of hours. No problem! I said to myself. I can roll with this.

I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. But before I’d even gotten through security, I had another text: the flight was delayed again. And then again. And again. All-in-all, the flight was rescheduled eleven times that day. By the time we were finally ready to leave (at 7:00 in the evening), a thunderstorm had moved in, and lightning strikes delayed our plane’s refueling. I didn’t get home until nearly 11:00 that night.

The day would have been utterly miserable had it not been for one thing: the kindness of strangers. The kindness of the frazzled airline attendant who was genuinely empathetic when she broke the news that I couldn’t get on an earlier flight; of fellow passengers who—despite being just as tired and exasperated as I was—made an effort to smile and ensure that others were taken care of; and most of all, of the young flight attendant who saw I was cold and brought me her own jacket to drape around my shoulders.

As Mother Teresa used to insist: not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love—and thereby make a beautiful difference in the lives of others. This week’s poem celebrates that power.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

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 mail letters and purchase 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.