constellations #4: small kindnesses
I like your hat.
Hi again.
Coming to you live/unedited with the fuzziest brain I’ve had in a long time, thanks to the back-to-back launch of two very wonderful projects I got to work on and the relative lack of sleep that results from their back-to-back-ness. I had planned something else for today but scrapped it in favor of this: a list of small kindnesses, for you or for other people, from an individual or from the world, to whoever might need them. I haven’t spent a lot of time with the concept of love languages but I think this is probably weighted with my biases so please feel free to chime in with your own small kindnesses, maybe if we pull together enough for list no. 2 that’ll show up in your inbox some day.
A list of small kindnesses:
a moment of knowing eye contact
venmoing someone far away for coffee because they deserve a treat (this happened to me and it felt really nice!)
finding yourself mimicking a friend’s speaking patterns
adding extra exclamation points to a message of encouragement !!
saying “that suits you” when someone gets a haircut
letting someone tell you a story they’ve told you before without saying “yeah i know you’ve told me this before” (shoutout to everyone spending extra time with family members right now)
“that’s such a smart perspective”
letting someone else drive/driving when the other person is too tired
surprise snacks (as noted in newsletter no. 3)
saying yes
saying no
reading closely
saying “let’s talk again soon” and meaning it
a thunderstorm that temporarily calms the humidity
a dog who is really excited to see you
being overjoyed when someone walks in the door who you haven’t seen in a while/all day/all afternoon/for a minute
(I wrote those two right after each other and then realized sometimes I’m the dog)
remembering (birthdays, names, stories, favorite songs)
tiny new leaves on old plants
As it turns out there is a poem called “Small Kindnesses,” which is quite sweet as well:
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.”
Of course sometimes we all need bigger kindnesses, especially now, a moment/era/universe of crisis for many. I hope we all find new and more and bigger and smaller ways to take care of each other this week.
xo,
M