holiday

I've noticed something about myself: my friendliness can be quite fair weathered.

I can be friendly and benevolent when I want to and when I feel like it, but usually when I don't- I am not. I do it all rather unconsciously, perhaps that's why I've just started noticing this pattern.

One day my heart is bursting with benevolence for mankind and life is beautiful. And then... there are the days that I saunter through the store, ignoring the well meaning, ill dressed cashier, deliberately rolling my eyes at that noisy, screaming child and it's helpless mother. When I catch myself in the middle of such pretentious absorption- I'm a little mortified and ashamed. How on earth did I go from being Wendy Darling one day to Medusa the next?

I don't want to make a deliberate, forced, un-genuine point of practicing friendliness, but I know real love won't just flourish entirely on its own. So, recently I'm trying to keep self-preoccupied, ugly Medusa at bay. She wastes my time and misrepresents the love I want to show the world and she distorts who I really am. What I've begun to do is to simply just smile; to smile when I don't want to. Yes, its elementary. But, truly, it is a gem of an idea. And more than being a nice idea, it works. There is just something mystical about showing kindness to people, to strangers, to the world. It haunts you with satisfaction, especially if the love you show is reciprocated, then life becomes even more welcome and sacred.

Every time you smile at someone,
it is an action of love, a gift to
that person, a beautiful thing.

{Mother Teresa}