And did you say "good morning" in return?
Each day begins. It has a middle and an end like any good story. In the confines of time between dawn and sunset (really only half the day's allotted twenty four hour span assuming twelve hours of daylight for the purpose of this comment) humankind can work wonders of creation or destruction.We tend to think of destruction as a 'large scale' word, denoting wars and governments and those of power. Sometimes we need to look closer to home. At what we do or do not do. We need to take account and see how we add up in the destructive stakes today.
Did we return a greeting or did we push blindly by? Did we take time to answer a young'uns question, asked for the umpteenth time but driven by the needs of the young to be in context, to be in territory they know, or did we tell them more or less sharply to be quiet, or even to 'shut up'? Did we respond to a smile? When a loving hand brushed through our hair or over the curve of our behind did we smile and say "Later" or did we snap "Not now!"?
How many little knife slashes have we dealt to the fabric of our lives from dawn to sunset? To strangers, family members, co-workers? how many to ourselves? The look in the mirror accompanied by the internal thought "You stupid ...you fat...you ugly..you boring...you unlucky...." the unwitting stumble on the stairs that elicits a harsh 'you clumsy idiot' instead of a pause and internal check to see your precious self is all intact.
We slash away, unthinking, and then in the darkness huddle close about our wounds and wonder why our life has the taste of ashes and despair. Why we are alone, unsought, unloved. We cry and pray, lamenting our misfortune, blaming the world and sometimes even though we don't believe, a god we think is failing in its job.
What can we do? Poor powerless naked apes abandoned here to conjure with rocks and metals. We can look around, return favours, ignore insults and look into the mirror at the miracle we are, no matter how far from our ideal, and we can offer first to love ourselves thus opening the door to loving others.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It is our judgment as we look that catalogues the world.
Comments (1)
Very touching.
The commercial is here if you want to see it:
If every single person embraced common courtesy all the time, we'd already have world peace.