"Be Kind; Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."
My friend Sara Lewis Holmes used that quote as a through-line in her amazing novel Operation Yes!
It’s ancient, and Greek, (the quote, not the novel) but it feels awfully relevant still, don’t you think?
When someone yells in traffic or cuts ahead in line or fails to hold a door open, maybe it’s ’cause I cut them off, or dawdled, or played the wallflower. Or maybe he or she really is kind of a jerk. Or, maybe, probably, there’s some bigger pain, a great battle at play, and this is just a little bit of crossfire. It’s easy to forget that. I do, almost every day. But I try not to.
And here’s another thing.
What if also everyone you meet is harboring some great joy?
Or love.
Or passion.
Or at least some great possibility?
And what if we tried to remember that, too?
And there was suddenly just this gargantuan human bond over presumed joy?
How sweet would that be?
That’s kind of what I was thinking about this morning on my bike, having just delivered my daughter at school. I was caught up in the post-drop-off traffic and there were all these moms and dads, on foot and in their cars and on their phones and in a hurry and I thought, I wonder what’s up with all of these folks today? I mean, it’s a Friday, so that’s good. But it’s gray and muggy, so that’s not. But it’s nearly summer vacation, so that’s good. But that means a lot of goodbyes, so that’s not.
And then I thought, but what do I know?
They’re all just moving along with their own great battles, or joys, right?
And then I came home and found this poem, kind of waiting for me.
Funny, the way that works…
The woman with a tumor in her neck
Love it, Liz! Why/how was it waiting for you? That is a nice image, also! A poem, waiting for you.
Tabatha
I often catch myself thinking, especially here at school, just what might be the one great hope of each of my students. And how what I say to them, how I interact with them, how I value them might make the difference in them believing in themselves or not. It is my variation of the “be kind” quote.
“like everybody else”. Ain’t that the truth?
Yeah. You just never know. And you shouldn’t assume. Ever.
Presumed joy, Wow. The Quakers quote George Fox saying “walk gently over the earth looking for that of God in everyone.” Seeing that every person harbors some great potential is like that. Thanks for this post!
Sorry, I got that quote wrong. It’s really: “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.” — George Fox, 1656
I love it when you further explore an already amazing thought such as Be Kind, everyone you meet is carrying a burden (that’s my twist on the quote because ‘battles’ sound too momentous for me.) And then to come home to that poem, well, that is just remarkable. I wonder how many people are experiencing something remarkable right now.
i find i do a lot of introspective thinking while on my bike, something i haven’t been able to do as much this rainy spring. and, true, it’s difficult to remember that others are fighting great battles because the sound of the ones in our head often drown everything else out.
great find on the poem, or rather, it was nice of that poem to find you when it did.