A Smile, A Nod, A Kind Word in Everyday Ramblings

Other than the cats and myself, I didn’t talk to anyone yesterday.

This happens to me periodically. I did get out. I went for a run and then walked up the hill above the track early and later I walked into downtown to deposit a check because for the third time in a row the bank machine I usually go to wasn’t accepting deposits. (Note of privileged exasperation there.)

I smiled at people and I believe had a relatively friendly affect. I wasn’t looking at my phone or listening to podcasts on my wireless headphones.

Mrs. Sherlock switched our hiking day to today and then just canceled because she is not feeling great. We won’t go to church (it is Pride Day, which is a huge big deal at our church) but were planning to walk instead. I haven’t seen her in two weeks so it will be fun to hear about her travels when I see her next.

Most Honorable is still housebound and Kes is lifeguarding for him.

I’ve stopped drinking soda regularly (go me!) and so that means I am not going to convenience stores, which sell it cheaply as a loss leader to get folks into the stores. I often notice when I am in those stores that the staff can often be the only person an individual talks to during the day as they cater to addictive behaviors and human weakness.

This is an aside but my local 7-Eleven franchise is owned by I believe a Sikh family. The matriarch runs it on a daily basis and her sister-in-law works most days and every once in a blue moon you see the father, who clearly has a profession that he works at. They have two college-aged very Americanized children who work there now and again.

In principal I have a thing about people who profit off other’s weaknesses and like to stay away when I can. For about 16 months I didn’t go in there because they didn’t have the soda I am drinking.

When I went back a few months ago as my soda habit as comfort got a little slippery I noticed that the two other people that I got to know that worked there, (a scrappy family oriented recovering alcoholic who is unbelievably patient with all sorts of aberrant behavior and a cross dressing Latinx that often wears an unfortunate shade of pink lipstick and is one of the sweetest people on planet earth) are still there.

So there you go. Nothing is ever simple is it? This family provides a living for these people that would otherwise be marginalized.

I wish they had a better option but I am glad they have this option.

About the recent news of high profile suicides the gifted Andrew Solomon writes in the New Yorker…

“Modernity is alienating, and it has been alienating for a great while; look at an Edward Hopper painting if you think this post-industrial misery has come about only since the Internet was invented. Isolation is another significant suicide risk. People who believe that no one will miss them have little to stand between them and the final act. As someone who has written and spoken about depression, I receive frequent letters from people grappling with the condition, and what is most striking to me is how alone many of them are. I hear from people who wake up, eat breakfast, go to a job at which they interact with a machine all day, pick up food on the way home, eat in front of a television, and then go to bed. These people are so alone that they are effectively invisible to the rest of us; we don’t get to interact with them enough to see their misery. Many of them describe suicidal feelings.”

So my mission today is to (in my own self-interest) get out into Dodge and in spite of my social anxiety, talk to someone.

I heard this great story yesterday about these three middle-class women in the late sixties who found themselves standing out in a blizzard with anti-nuclear placards in front of the White House and afterwards they were saying to each other, well, that was a seriously uncomfortable waste of time.

But what they didn’t know was that the famous baby doctor, Benjamin Spock, drove by them in a car on his way to a meeting at the White House and said to himself, wow, if they feel that strongly about the terrible possibility of nuclear war and war in general maybe I should look into getting involved in that issue.

And he did. It was a big factor in legitimizing the anti-war effort.

You just never know if your actions, a smile or a kind word, can help someone get though a lonely day, or heck, maybe even change the world.

And boy does this world need changing.

Last updated June 17, 2018