The Small Kindness of Recognition

Lulu and I at Prairie dog park, where many encounters take place for dog and human

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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 Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019). Posted by kind permission of the poet.

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Once every couple weeks I go in to pick up a sandwich at my favorite local restaurant, the Sunn Cafe in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. When I went in this week the woman who brought out my sandwich greeted me with a big smile.

"So good to see you in here again,"  she said. 

That small welcome was the perfect "side" to my sandwich. While getting my haircut at The Salon by Charles, several people popped in to say hello or update him on their lives or announce an upcoming event. The energy inside The Salon, along with a reliably interesting conversation with Charles (the owner), and a great haircut, invites me back again and again. Recently I finally gave the local yoga studio a try.  And have since rearranged my schedule to get to my favorite class. There I am greeted by name and meet up with familiar and new neighbors. 

These brief encounters of recognition and kindness can and will lift up everyone present. They feed the soul of our shared humanity and give us the sense of place and belonging we all deserve (and want).  

Write about some recent encounters that lifted your spirit, or gave you a new perspective. 

Write about a time you were or weren't recognized. 

There are many ways to recognize others without even knowing their names. How is this true for you?