your life
- AATICUS FINCH
T hese days, humanity tastes to me like a boiled green mealie with butter and salt. It’s a comforting deliciousness that runs in rivulets down my chin.
That’s how I feel every time Christina brings me a Shoprite bag full of mealies from her garden. She shares from her poverty. Just because I once gave her a lift in the rain.
I recently read about The Kindness Revolution book that Hugh Mackay published during the pandemic. It’s precisely the type of revolution we need in the midst of corruption, crime, potholed roads and loadshedding.
Compassion. Generosity. Thoughtfulness.
On social media people tell me they have realised that in recent times they have instinctively been doing more for others. People give, because giving makes you feel good. And, heaven knows, we sorely need to feel good.
Sometimes it’s just the thought that counts.
My friend Margie’s colleagues gave her a voucher for facial-hair removal for her birthday… Good intentions, she laughingly told me with a smooth-as-silk jawline. Middle age is not your friend and it probably helps if the people around you are aware of this?
Small gestures can make a big difference, says Ian Ugarte in his book Small Is The New Big. We just need to make time to reach out to each other.
Melita Tessy writes in ‘We walked beside each other, talking about things we should have been least concerned about. But at that moment, it was those things that kept me alive.’
