What goodness have I experienced today?
My Manager, Pete, let me sleep-in while he visited with his niece.
He brought back a fresh breakfast when he returned from his visit.
We ate it sanely as we watched the news.
We were grateful that those we support in North Dakota who are trying to protect the land and the water have a respite from the attack.
We are grateful that different groups of people can see the importance of saving our land, water and natural resources for many generations to come.
We are glad that there are people who love this earth, with a passion like we do, and want to protect it.
We are glad that there are those who do not see the earth as something to exploit for personal gain. Tears fill my eyes as I write this.
How wonderful it was that Pete and I had plenty of time to pack our bags together after five productive and wonderful days in New York City. Having lived there and gone to school there in several phases in my life, I like visiting there – – – I understand New York and I understand New Yorkers – both are lovely – – and challenging.
I am grateful for the lovely “aftertaste” of a musical we saw – free – at Riverside Church (my old stomping grounds – I lived in the projects on 126th Street when my first child was a baby while I did my internship in clinical psychology at Bellevue – we were grateful for the projects.).
The name of the musical was Don’t Call Me Outta My Name written and directed by Dr. Glory Van Scott. The cast was all local kids in a rainbow of brown tones. I sat there with tears of gratitude streaming down my face.
Afterwards, I told the creator of the musical that “Arkansas needs to see this.” She said she would come. We hugged and cried together. How lucky I am that as I write this, tears of memory and sensation fill my eyes.
I am grateful that we had a lovely Uber driver from Pakistan who shared his life story as we sat in traffic sure that we would miss our plane.
I am grateful that after a few moments of worry, I settled down, enjoying the moment with the Uber driver and remembered that “Life is a process.” I can participate in the process and I can never control it so why waste energy?
I especially appreciate that when we arrived in time, our driver told us we “were good people and good passengers” and we told him he was a good person and a good driver and I hugged him and he me. Later, I hoped I had not broken a Muslim man’s taboo. Clearly, we appreciated one another and – – –
I love being so old now that most taboos do not apply.
I experienced goodness when, before I sat down, the man sitting next to me in First Class asked me which seat I preferred. We had tried to get me an aisle seat from the time of booking to no avail – AND, he was OFFERING it to me. Pete was unable to get a First Class seat and had settled further back.
The man sitting next to me asked what I do and I said I was a writer. He asked me what – and I said, “non-fiction books.” He then asked what and I told him my New York Times bestseller was called When Society Becomes an Addict and in it, I had likened Western culture to an active alcoholic. He said it sounded interesting and I told him I thought it was.
Then, Pete came up to give me something and my seatmate said, “I think you two need to sit together.” (This was after, for some reason, I had told him that I was 82-years-old and I loved being old.) He said that he would have guessed two decades younger and I told him that I get that a lot.
He then insisted that he exchange places with Pete so “we could work.”
Pete had told me that he had an “awesome” seat and I told him Pete was just fine and he insisted. (In the meantime, he had looked up my books online.)
I was so shocked with his offer to trade seats that I offered to give him a book (we had been at a conference and had a few left).
He said, “No thanks, I just ordered one.”
I told him that I was shocked and pleased by his generosity as so many people are so “out for themselves these days.”
As he got up to leave and go back to Pete’s seat, he said, “I suppose that’s true, but I don’t believe in that. Where does that get you?”
I just seem to find goodness all around me.
He does market analysis.