#197: On kindness, flower lovers and day-to-day decency
..."there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.” -Isaac Asimov
Dear reader,
Today’s newsletter contains a bunch of disjointed thoughts, anecdotes and poems. But this collection of odds and ends is special to me because they’re all about going beyond imagining a better world, and actually creating it together. And collective change, I’ve realized, always begins with the self.
Pay it forward
I’ve always been a big believer in the Pay it forward concept, the idea of transference and how kindness has the potential to amplify. The film is also a must-watch. I’d like to highlight two comments on YouTube that explain why: “My first memory of empathy.” + “Watching this kind of stuffs as a kid can really determine your future”.)
A few recent good deeds from here and there that stayed with me:
Helping the lady at the airport who was struggling to get her crying baby into the carrier with her suitcase.
My mother apparently buys all the candy floss from a vendor once every month so they can go home early, and distributes it to everyone she meets
My friend Richie has been putting away a part of his yearly earning as small grants (‘Richie Grants’) for the past few years, and helps locals he meets on his travels set up small-scale, socially-driven ventures that boost the local economy. Every year, he increases the amount by 5-10%.
I’d love to hear about good deeds you’ve done/encountered. Maybe we can compile all the random acts of kindness to inspire each other?
Poetry for the soul
1. A Poem for Someone Who is Juggling Her Life by Rose Cook (via)
This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.
2. What Is Broken Is What God Blesses Jimmy Santiago Baca (Excerpt)
“we work, we worry, we love
but always with compassion
reflecting our blessings—
in our brokenness”
3. Instructions by Rudy Francisco
gather
your mistakes,
rinse them with
honesty and self
reflection,
let dry until you
can see every choice
and the regret
becomes brittle
cover the
entire surface
in forgiveness.
remind yourself that
you are human
and this too
is a gift
4. What For? by Kim Stafford
What is beauty for—
sunset searing my soul
without thought or plan?
Dawn green beauty, bee hum honey,
stone in hand so silky the long sea
worked centuries to ravish?
And what for pain—thorn
in heart for my hurt child,
dumb ache for my brother gone
thirty years, slow burn of disgrace
when I fail at what I am to do: to see
my country bruised and torn?
So, to make good things—
a song, a kind act, a friendship—
feed on beauty at every turn.
And to make truth, feed on sorrows,
gnash their salty structures,
bite the bitter rind.
5. Morning Meditation by Rainer Maria Rilke
Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers, which
could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way
into the answer.
Hoovu Finds: a community dedicated to flower lovers
This full moon, I launched Hoovu Finds, a community and space that celebrates flowers and creativity. I’m doing this in partnership with the lovely women of Hoovu Fresh, who are making fresh flowers available at your doorstep (7 cities in India so far). Can’t wait to see how this collaboration blossoms!
I’m also curating a monthly newsletter on flowers with them called The Floral Dispatch. First one’s coming out in early August. Subscribe now! 🌸
Chitthi Exchange: Sign up for a penpal!
I’ve re-opened the Chitthi Exchange form after a long hiatus. So if you’d like to experience the goodness of letter writing and correspondence with a penpal, sign up here. There’s already 898 sign-ups for this round and the form closes in end September. All the penpals will be paired and notified only in October.
Also, the project got featured on The Citizen. Yay.
Fun finds
The Webb Telescope’s images of space (yum) + the Internet’s memes about it + somebody made a puzzle of it
Nestflix (Fictional movies within movies) + Tudum (a website that tells stories behind the Netflix stories)
In the headlines: “Bull storms Kolkata school, cow lures it away”
A favorite: Karen Marshall’s Between Girls (1985 - 2015)
Words that resonated
“Consider that collectively, we are in a place where many of us are feeling nameless feelings right now. It is possible that years down the line, we may have to create new words to describe what we were feeling in this space. Some of the words we use to describe what we’re experiencing right now just might not feel like enough… and maybe, that’s okay… because we have never been here before. This is all brand new, and maybe, in time, the words will need to be new, too.
Perhaps, feeling what you need to feel is a process… and finding the language for those feelings is a process, too.”
“It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.”
-Isaac Asimov“Even with ongoing senseless bloodshed and gut-wrenching suffering, we see, in brief moments of reprieve, underneath the dust, rubble and anguish, the frayed threads of human connection, held together by the fibres of empathy. Moments that clarify, concentrate, and consecrate what it means to serve in the army of kindness.”
-Josh Pillay, Wait! Just Listen“There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative; but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.”
-John O’Donohue, Benedictus – a Book of Blessings“I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that’s really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.”
-Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
Wishing you Bangalore-esque weather and random acts of kindness,
Rohini :)
thank you for gathering this together, Rohini! Just what my heart needed.
absolutely loved this. can't wait for the next one.