Kindness works well with strangers, but even better with those close to you who have ceased to expect it.
From A Pocket Guide to Being Human, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man in the brown coat held the door for a woman he had never seen, then walked three blocks home and let the screen door slap shut behind him without turning around. I watched both halves of it from the maple, which is the only reason I know they belonged to the same morning. For years I thought kindness was mostly a thing you spent on the unfamiliar, a toll you paid at the edges of your own territory; Switch got a walnut out of me in November and has been getting them since, and I never once called that generosity. Kindness works well with strangers, but even better with those close to you who have ceased to expect it. The stranger has no record of you and so no surprise is possible. I keep turning over what it costs to be surprised by somebody you live with.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- The true gift leaves no trace on the hand of the giver.
- You will walk more confidently if you watch the road than if you watch your feet.
- There are no empty gestures made with a full heart.
- Before you sharpen your tongue, remember that it spends most of its time in your mouth.
- To have the same conversation with another that you have with yourself takes a pure heart.
- It doesn’t all fit because it’s not all needed.