Kindness

Doing a bit of spring cleaning, I went through piles of old magazines that I had stashed away. Flipping through the March issue of Oprah, I stumbled upon a poem that really hit home. At the risk of sounding like the world's biggest cheeseball, I've started to appreciate the value in the struggles I've faced. I've realized that you can't truly experience happiness without having hardships along the way, making everything that much sweeter. I wouldn't be who I am or appreciate where I'm at without the obstacles that seemed so unconquerable at the time. Love how this poem describes that so perfectly...

Kindness

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.
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 every where
like a shadow or a friend.
-Naomi Shihab Nye