the kindness of strangers

While wrapping things up at the end of the day, I realized that my car keys were nowhere to be found. I remembered that I was a bit stressed this morning, so thought that maybe I absentmindedly left my keys on the roof or trunk of my car. It turned out that I dropped them (not sure how or why I didn't hear the dropping sound!) and that an incredibly kind person brought my car keys to the parking garage security office! This note was folded and placed under one of the windshield wipers.

Thank you so very much, Sue! May your incredible kindness be returned many times over : ) Her kindness has made me think of the the following poem:

Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.