This is a bit different than what I usually write but with what looks like a really long and hard winter coming up for lots of people I've been thinking more about how to make a positive difference in the lives of those around me more and maybe you have too.
Shortly after my first marriage began my then-husband and I joined an intentional community in LA for one year. The community was committed to "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable" and did so by inviting homeless folks to live with them, running a soup kitchen and organizing and engaging in various demonstrations for peace and the rights of homeless/the poor. While living there I quickly became extremely depressed. I still don't know if it was my changing beliefs (slowly crossing all the way over from Christian to atheist), regretting the marriage, seeing environmental destruction and poverty on a level I never had before or something hormonal that caused the depression, likely it was a perfect storm of all of the above.
About six months into my year there I became suicidal to the point where I was thinking about it seriously several times a day. Often I would walk home from the soup kitchen instead of riding back in the van with the others and on the walk home I had to cross two long bridges. The railings were powdery black with smog and I would pause and place my hands on them in the middle of each bridge and imagine what it would feel like to climb over and jump off.
There was always two things that would pop into my head that made me keep walking home:
1. Imagining someone telling my grandparents I jumped off a bridge.
That was compelling but not quite enough to get me to walk on.
2. The memory of seeing my mom's friend Melissa washing a gigantic pile of dishes all by herself after my horrible wedding. The wedding had gone wrong in many ways and caused drama amongst family and friends on a tv worthy scale. I had insisted on having real dishes for the meal and cake at the wedding for environmental reasons and it was a lot of dishes and the wedding was at my parent's house. I had neglected to plan for clean-up or even pack for the honeymoon and I was feeling like shit from the stress of the day, the knowledge that the wedding had caused major feuds and a potential MRSA outbreak and a looming feeling of lifelong misery being ahead for me and then there was Melissa quietly just scrubbing away at a tower of dishes with a smile on her face. She was a close family friend but in no way obligated to assist in cleaning up in any way.
She wasn't trying to make a statement or teach anyone a lesson about kindness, she wasn't trying to bring any attention to herself and she certainly wasn't trying to save my life she just saw a way to be helpful and show her love to my family and seized the moment.
I don't know why my brain always went to that scene as I stood at the guard rails of those bridges but I'm glad it did because always when I thought of Melissa I turned away and kept walking. Even with images in my mind of my saint-like housemates literally washing the feet of the poorest of the poor and throwing down their lives in dramatic ways daily for others it was Melissa's ordinary act of kindness that reminded me that there are people everywhere that care and the world isn't all bad.
I still think about Melissa doing those dishes but it has a different meaning for me now. Thinking of how Melissa's act affected me during that time reminds me of how much power I have in other people's lives every day.
Since most people don't write publically about their intimate emotional experiences,
you never find out how you affect other people.
We have the opportunity to show our love for others in small ways all the time. Sometimes it feels pointless to be kind but who knows how many of your small acts, hugs and words of encouragement go on to keep someone walking over the rest of the bridge.
During this time when everyone seems to be going through some kind of personal crisis, the world has been turned upside down and people are estranged from the ones they love
....remember to be a Melissa.
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