May this question help you to plan your day. I confess, it’s constantly in the back of my mind with almost all my daily interactions.
You’ve seen him demanding to see the boss, insisting on getting his way, banging fists on the counter. He becomes aggressive and threatening when things don’t go his way. You can be this person if you want. It all depends on what kind of person you want to be.
You’ve heard and seen her, raising her voice at a waiter in a fine restaurant because something wasn’t up to her standards. She plays dirty and attempts to humiliate helpers to land a free meal. You can be this way if you want. Everything depends on who you want to be.
You’ve seen him, kind and patient under stress, generous and openhearted, even when facing difficulties. You can be this way if you want. It’s always, and there are no exceptions, up to you.
You’ve seen her, helping the poor, serving the sick, making meals for neighbors, all-the-while undergoing her own stresses, suffering beneath her own burdens and loads. She serves while she herself deserves to be served. You can be this way if you want. Everything pivots on what kind of person you want to be.
My friend Michael — a finer human (than Michael) I’m yet to meet.
Genuine kindness expressed today, among us all –– colleagues at the office, the teachers in the staff room, doctors and nurses who pass each other running the hallways of a busy hospital –– wherever we find ourselves at work or at play, expressed kindness will be helpful to all.
Expressing kindness will change your mood and enhance your day.
Small acts of kindness might not change the world, but they will enhance our individual experiences of work, and add joy and meaning to the most repetitive of tasks.
Kindness in a nutshell:
Don’t gossip, or spread rumors, or tell tales about others. Don’t speak negatively about other people. Don’t lie. Try not to ignore people, or regard others as a means to getting your way — no one wants to be your stepping stone.
Be generous, and wide-hearted, open-handed. Offer accurate compliments to those who might least expect to hear kind words. Tip well, even if the service or food is not up to scratch. How you tip is about you, not the service or food.
Most of all, and this is a well-known secret to great fulfillment, do your job — whatever it is — very well. It is a powerful way to be kind both to yourself and to your boss!
Thulani (center) in Togo in 1999. We were there for a week after being refused entry into Ukraine. We were returned to Frankfurt, spent the week in Munchin, flew to Togo, before returning to the USA.
I saw Santa at the Children’s Museum with a feather of a child pleading her case. They were locked in discussion, a confessional of sorts, as she entered into detail of her every Christmas wish. Hands, eyes, and all of her face enticed Santa closer lest he miss a detail living so clearly in her head.
“Oh, you want, oh, I see it. Why yes, of course. Perfectly,” Santa said, his voice tapering off into her ear, “I will see what I can do about that.”
Then she nestled into his side, her shoulders comfortably enveloped by his plush red suit as if to declare her mission accomplished. He was a perfect depiction of everything I imagined him to be and the sight easily immersed me in the voices and music of my own Christmases past.
Santa came all year round to our home. I’d look through the window in April or mid-August and Santa would be strolling up the driveway on his return from visits to every home on the street. He’d be wearing dad’s shoes and one of his ties underneath the tatty red coat, but I knew better than to expose his identity. I wanted to believe in Santa and he in turn needed me to believe. Such faith had rewards. I knew better than to dash my own hopes. I wasn’t ready to lose my trust in Santa for anyone and certainly not by my own hand.
He couldn’t resist visits to the whole neighborhood and would drop in from time to time and inspire children toward good behavior, perfect obedience at school, and remind them to count their blessings one by one. At every appearance in our home we’d sing “The Little Boy that Santa Clause Forgot” and we’d all have to cry. He insisted on it.
The lines “he didn’t have a daddy” and “went home to play with last year’s broken toys” really got us going.
It was clear he sang to all the children of the world who’d had to skip childhood and who had known poverty; children who’s fathers had gone to war or whose fathers or mothers had fled their families.
Donning the suit, surprising the children, was our Santa’s way of making the world right.
His visits created intrigue in the neighborhood, and to every child he repeated the promise that this Christmas, no child on this street would be forgotten. As far as I could tell none ever was.
The last Christmas we had together was in August of 1994. We were riding in a car and in the curves of Bluff Road when spontaneously he began to sing, “Christmas comes but once a year.”
The car became a holy place as I heard once more of the boy who “wrote a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum and it broke his little heart to find Santa hadn’t come.”
The tears we both shed required no encouragement for we both somehow knew this would be the last time he’d sing this nostalgic hymn.
Now this old song is top of my list of Christmas songs.
The melody emerges randomly in my awareness, most particularly when faced with children who are in need. I have had to silence it at all times of the year.
It was the little girl’s confidence, Santa’s grace, and the loving parents looking from the side that caught my attention last week. She touched his flowing beard and told him her every Christmas dream and I found myself listing my own requests with childlike zeal.
It gave me renewed hope that you and I, the real Santas of the world, could deliver a more hopeful tomorrow for “those little girls and boys that Santa Claus forgot.”
(First published December 9, 2000 in the Indianapolis Star)
I post this at the beginning of every December so it may “ring a bell” —- no pun intended:
Adult Jesus Ruins My Christmas Shopping
Christmas shopping would be so much easier if Jesus would just remain a baby.
Every time I venture out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child and try to purchase a gift for someone I love I am stumped.
What do I buy that will somehow declare the birth of the Son of God?
I don’t have the where-with-all for a gift that marks the birth of a King.
Besides, every time I begin to shop in honor of Baby Jesus, I get images of Him being whipped unmercifully and then nailed upon a cross.
Blood spurts derail my shopping. I resist the thoughts but they will not go away.
Before I can do much looking around the malls Jesus jumps out of the crib. He’s fully adult, almost running, sometimes dancing, celebrating on the streets and I can hardly keep up. He’s healing people left, right, and center. He’s getting into all kinds of trouble.
I am lost. I am out of control. No, he’s out of control.
He goes to the wrong places. He loves the seedy parts of town. He goes where I have never been before. He mixes with the rejected. He storms City Hall and insults merciless leaders. He is outspoken, scathing to those who are unfair in their business practices. He doesn’t care about rank, stature, or wealth but detests double standards, addresses them at every encounter.
I want to grab him, shove him back in the crib where he was safe, where we were all safer.
When I thought he would stop in at a church or two – perhaps a cathedral built in his honor – he’s off in a smoky bar with washed out losers. He’s talking politics like I have never heard. He’s hot on fairness, justice, mercy, truth. I tell him not to mix politics and religion and blush with the absurdity of it all.
If he would just stay in one place like a baby should is all I can think.
It’s not long before I am in a jostle with the crowds. It’s not the kind of popularity I was expecting.
Prostitutes love him. Drunks defend him. The poorest of the poor, the marginalized, the rejected, are out in their masses. He dances in the streets with street children and people he has just met. Young men and women, piercings and tattoos all over their bodies, circle him celebrate like long lost friends. Then, ignoring ordinances, he feeds the applauding masses.
Now what do I buy?
Clearly, anything I spend, if I am really out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, has to be grand. Yet modest. His birth was modest: a shed, a feeding trough. Secrecy. Shame. Danger. Poverty dictated the details for this dramatic night. I cannot spend much. Yet, it was the greatest night Earth had ever seen. Angels sighed! The order of everything disturbed by Love’s intervention.
I tell him he’s ruining things, that he is too quick to befriend the wrong people, but his mind is elsewhere. I beg him to befriend religious leaders, a pastor or two, but he will not listen.
Then, they are up in arms against him.
All but a few want him gone. He’s a hindrance to tourism. He’s a threat to peace and he’s being accused of not attending church!
Next, he looks crucifixion in the eye.
If only he would remain a baby.
It is so much easier to shop for a baby.
(Published first in The Indianapolis Star some years ago) ………….. Yesterday’s brief outing to a beautiful market:
You have escaped the world of all-or-nothing behaving. You don’t throw in the towel because you failed. You try again. You seek in all your trying to do no harm, not to yourself or others.
You have escaped the world of black-and-white thinking and cast off your cloak of knowing it all. You know that people who give the impression of knowing it all, really don’t. Sometimes you engage them simply for the (harmless, of course) fun it provides.
You have embraced ambiguity. You understand that the world won’t crumble and the church won’t tumble and your family may indeed breathe a sigh of relief because you are able to admit there are a few things about which you are unsure.
You embrace your frailties, failures and feebleness with deep regret and sadness (sometimes) and humor (sometimes). You are aware that your constant striving, trying to prove whatever, trying to be right, distorts your beauty. You accept that you are a person, not a prized racehorse.
You desire to be more loving than you have ever been even if you are not quite theologically accurate or sound (who is?). You know that “accurate” theology has killed millions. You want your attempts at sound theology to at least lead you to greater love.
Last evening’s basketball playoff in the world’s really largest field house.
Next week, aiming particularity for Thursday, millions of people in the United States will travel “home” to a family meal called Thanksgiving. It’s almost a given that, after turkey and mashed potatoes and all the “fixings” and before the football (American “Football” of course) on TV people will go around the table and express their gratitude for everything from the nation as a whole to grandma for fixing her trademark green beans.
I confess, it is no easy holiday for an immigrant given that it’s my sons and me and no extended family, but we have grown accustomed to it and are always included in Nolan Smith’s (former Beachwood and Durban North person) family for Thanksgiving.
I have my list ready to go:
I am grateful for my sons and the men they have become. They are honest and very hard working. They know how to conduct themselves in all contexts and I am often moved to tears when others tell me about some of the things they know about my sons.
I am grateful to my readers around the world. I never imagined that The Mercury would become the international platform that it has become for me.
I am grateful for my extended family around the world who do such an amazing job of keeping in touch. Not a week goes by without a vibrant back and forth involving several continents.
I am grateful for the speaking opportunities afforded me. It’s a demonstration of Beauty for Ashes and Grace-upon-Grace if ever I knew one.
I am grateful to be an American and to have dual citizenship with South Africa. Really, a man can love two nations. I know it is possible because I do.
If you have been a caregiver to your spouse, a parent, friend, for any length of time and now that person has died, you may expect:
To feel that part of you is lost or gone because it is. Caring requires love and deep unique bonding — quite different from the bonding you already had prior to the season of caregiving. In the separation, in your own way, you are wounded. You are not damaged, you are wounded. Know the difference.
To feel you are rattling in a cage of caring habits and not quite sure of what to do or where to be. You feel pulled between responsibilities that no longer exist and feel irresponsible for not being present where you once were. In short, you don’t know where to be or what to do.
To experience some guilt about the way things turned out, developed or did not develop. You flood with questions: was there more you could have done to ease pain, prolong life, usher healing? Was something crucial missed, forgotten?
To feel guilty – at least momentarily – if you have fun.
Take heart. Like a child, who, arms outstretched, turns and turns until dizzy, falls to the ground, then rises to walk and appears to have had too much to drink, in the act of walking, balance and order gradually returns.
You will reorient after your double loss: a loved one and an integral role and find your feet.
When it is all said and done very few, if anyone, will know about my deepest regrets.
Will they know yours? Will it matter if they do or not? What have you done with yours?
My regrets run deep, run long.
Some have taken me a lifetime of attempts at repair, some with a degree of success, others with no indications of any success.
It has not been without trying.
I have looked at myself in the mirror on hundreds, if not thousands of occasions, taken stock, took responsibility for the ways in which I hurt others.
I have given much time to assess the seasons of my life when indifference was a way of life, seasons when it looked to others as if I was winning, achieving, succeeding, when I alone knew full well I was not.
If I am remembered at all – think of all the people who really are forgotten despite significant achievements – I hope it is for being a man of hope.
Perhaps closest to my heart is the hope that my sons will continue to be the fine men they are today: trustworthy, kind, and respectful; men who give up their seats for their elders, men who look people in the eye when they engage, men who listen more than they speak.
When I tell you you are going to tell me it is out of love or concern.
There are better ways to love me than emotional arm-wrestling.
You want me to respond to my circumstances as you may respond to pressures you are facing.
I am not you.
You are not me.
We are not the same.
We each have our own way of handling matters, from matters insignificant to matters of deep consequence.
This is not a rejection of you or of your love or an insult. It is a tribute to both of us.
I have no problem with you being unlike me.
Could you afford me the same freedom and privilege?
Very different life experiences shaped us each and delivered us to our unique challenges. It is only to be expected that our responses will be quite different.
Even what we perceive as threats are not the same. What seems to be a threat to you lands on me as a challenge. It works the other way around, too.
Let’s agree to love each other so powerfully, that we learn the fine art of leaving each other alone so our friendship may truly flourish.
I am here for you.
We can discuss anything you want and I will do it without exerting any pressure whatsoever.
No one feels healthy, and on top of the world, all the time.
Emotional ebbs and flows are normal.
Good days and bad days come with being human.
Give yourself a break.
If you are “down” for days, if you are unwilling to get out of bed, unwilling to engage in the regular and “normal” joys and tasks common to all people: like eating, bathing or showering, wearing clean clothing, getting ready for the day, the routines required of the general population, it may be time to seek help.
If you are overly tired and unmotivated, despite having had a good deal of sleep and find it tough to identify any joyfulness in any of your surroundings or activities or relationships, it may be time to seek help. If you sometimes feel plagued by dark thoughts, scary ideas you can’t seem to shed or shake – speak up to someone who can assist you to find help.
Emotional ebbs and flows are common but when the ebbs significantly outnumber the flows, it’s probably time to let someone know you are bordering on desperate or are already desperate.
While you think and feel you’re trapped in an emotional or relational cul-de-sac of desperation, you probably don’t have to remain there.
Reach out.
There are people willing, qualified, waiting to listen.
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