Hurrying to the checkout line in the grocery store a few days ago, I sighed audibly when I saw how long it was. It had already taken me much more time than I’d allotted myself for this shopping excursion, and now I was going to be seriously late getting home. Just as I was pulling out my phone to distract myself with multitasking, the woman in front of me turned around and said, “Go ahead; I’m not in a hurry.” “Really?” I asked, “Are you sure?” “Of course,” she kindly replied. That small kindness immediately transformed my mood and uplifted my spirit.

Mother Teresa reportedly said that, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” I think she was telling us that no matter how wealthy we are, how old we are, what we look like, what we do for a living, or where we live, every one of us can make a beautiful difference in the world. And wouldn’t it be a beautiful world if we all tried each day to do just one small thing with great love?

Small Kindnesses

by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

From the collection, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)