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Photo by Lopolo
Published June 14, 2015
About a week ago, a friend and I were talking about feelings, and how difficult they can be to embrace. It’s hard to let them simply be, and we think we have to do something about them, or wait for them to disappear, never to return.
These are thoughts we have about what we perceive as negative feelings; it’s never the ones that bring us joy. We’re glad to keep those, and we invite them to return often. We search for new ways to bring them back to us.
The conversation prompted me to think about something that happened years ago when a small group celebrated my grandmother’s birthday. She was well into her 80s, and although we didn’t know it at the time, she had only a short time left to live. When we gathered to sing to her around a cake with candles burning, she started crying and talking about visions she had of a daughter who had died many years before, 15 months after her birth. The atmosphere in the room sharply shifted. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, and not like a person who is about to blow out candles on a birthday cake.
Published May 4, 2015
From time to time, tweets disappear, leaving behind their ghost. This was one of my favorites from nearly a decade ago. Here in late 2023 as I rediscovered it, I am glad it’s here.
As originally formatted, I think, it displayed as:
Those broken parts
You hide from others
Show me
I am glad it’s here. I am glad to have reconnected with it.
Those broken parts You hide from others Show me
— LookOverThere (@Brave_Stranger) February 22, 2014
Photo by Iakov Filimonov
No, not the song, but if I’ve put it in your head, you’re welcome.
Not long ago I ordered a meal from a person who smiled and was cheerful throughout the transaction. It was late at night, and her job can’t be all that fun, yet her demeanor, not unlike that of the server in the photo above, was such that it seemed like she derived so much joy from serving people.
Soon after, I found myself thinking about something that hadn’t crossed my mind in a while.
More often than I’d care to admit, I’ve taken people in the service industry for granted. I see others who are worse offenders than I, but that doesn’t take me off the hook. It’s wrong to treat someone like a servant just because they are in a service type of job. And in terms of a test of a person’s character, there are few things as revealing as the way someone treats the wait staff at a restaurant.
What I found during my times when I was out of work, and even for weeks after returning to the ranks of the employed, is I felt the most empathy for people in such jobs at the times when I was at my most vulnerable. When things were tough for me. When I would have been happy to have any job. Those times taught me not to take anything for granted. I saw people working the checkout line or the service counter or answering the phones as real people, someone trying to make a living, feed their family, someone with goals and wishes and challenges in their lives, and struggles I didn’t know anything about.
Everyone is going through something. Try to be tender with them, try to empathize, especially if their job is to wait on you and serve you. As a friend of mine says, be kind.
I’ll try to do better myself when times are not so tough and I forget what it’s like.
Photo by Iakov Filimonov