Let Kindness In

We were talking about music. I told her how sad I was that I didn’t sing much any more.  She didn’t say anything. She listened.

We drank our tea. “Thanks for listening,” I told her. “It’s a gift.” 

She dismissed my words. 

Why, I asked.

“My parents told me to stay humble,” she said. “Vanity is a terrible thing.”

I don’t see it this way. It’s not humble to dismiss my appreciation — it’s a way of disowning one’s gift. Self-abnegation is not only humility.  Self-abnegation can also be the erasure of self.

This deflection also cuts off the possibility of connection. I wasn’t telling her I loved her shirt.  (Though why not?) I was telling her I loved how attentively she listened. And had she let that moment simply be, perhaps our connection would go just a little bit deeper.

Why do we have such a hard time letting kind words in?

Perhaps because we’ve been conditioned to conflate self-esteem with vanity. It’s a good practice to notice this difference. The antidote to having too much self is not having too little—it’s respecting one’s genuine worth.  This allows you to give to others from a place of awareness and love. 

The world could use more of that.

******

Terenga by James Crews

The next time someone says thank you,

instead of answering with you’re welcome,

what if you told the truth, as they do

in Senegal, saying: It is shared, it is

for both of us—the gift flowing back

and forth in all directions to touch

the lives of strangers who were never

a part of the initial exchange, caressing

their skin like steady rain in the middle

of a drought, making them look up

at the sky with unshielded eyes,

seeing now: to give is also to receive.