kindness

There is something about the raw display of kindness that shakes me at the core. There's a commercial on tv- one person helps a stranger on the street, and someone sees them, and the person who saw the good deed then does something nice for some other stranger on the street, and a chain effect begins. And the things are small- picking up the gloves they dropped- and sometimes obvious- pushing someone out of the way so they don't get buried under a tall stack of boxes that topples to the sidewalk. I am shaken.

I once saw something like that in person that, for some reason (actually, one that I remember) really stood out for me. Sitting in Bethesda in front of B&N, there was a guitarist playing on the sidewalk, a windy day, trash blowing all around this guy who was sort of tucked away in a little rounded corner (a nook) of the building. This one guy, from the audience, stands up, walks towards the singer, and he picks up the trash around him, he clears his space so that he can play without the trash blowing all around him. That's it- he picks up the trash, throws it in the bin, and sits back down. Shaken.

And it reminds me of the ultimate shake from kindness- the passage in The Grapes of Wrath that I cannot get enough of. Just a vague recollection of it shakes me- like the tickles kids feel when you haven't even touched them but have only hinted that you are going to tickle them. Here it is:

And here's a story you can hardly believe, but it's true, and it's funny, and it's beautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it out to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man who pulled them fed them. And that's true. But how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith.

The people in flight from the terror behind- strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.