I am grateful to be surrounded by wonderful people. Even when I don’t realize it. Especially when I don’t realize it. They are all around me, physically, virtually, perhaps even ethereally. Every time someone thinks about me, I am blessed. Every positive intention sent my way finds its way to me one way or another. Like the moment of grace I experienced yesterday “out of the blue” for no apparent reason. Perhaps at that very moment, someone was thinking about me, hoping I was okay. Perhaps it was an angel or the breath of god, or the spirit of my mother now 19 years gone or my father nearly four years gone. It is enough to be reminded that I am loved or at the very least thought well of by a variety of people. I am grateful for that.
This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the years I’ve developed friendships, acquaintanceships, colleague-ships and other genial and loving relationships with people all over the country and in different places around the world. I’m not sure when I really became interested in people; as a child I was somewhat shy and definitely preferred animals to people. My best friends were my siblings and my dog, and perhaps one or two schoolmates. But at some point my shyness became an asset: as a non-talker I became a really good listener, sitting for significant periods of time while various teenaged peers and friends told me their woes and I dispensed my sage wisdom. I was startled when I began to realize that even some adults talked to me about some nagging issue and listened to what I had to say with respect and interest. If you would have a friend, be a friend, I read somewhere, and I suppose I took the “be a friend” part very seriously.
In recent years it has come as no small surprise to me that I actually love people. It’s not simply that I love individual people; I love people in general. This is most startling to me as a well-established introvert who needs quiet time, still loves animals, and deeply misses hanging out with cows because they don’t want anything from me. Over the past few years the realization of my love for humans has come into sharper focus, particularly during the “series of unfortunate events” I experienced between September 2010 through March 2011, the aftereffects lasting for the next 18 months. It was during my own “suffering” that I was really able to deepen my sense of compassion and love for the people around me. It helps to define how I interact with people now, and while I still have a lot to learn about holding love and compassion for my fellow human beings–particularly those with whom I struggle or vehemently and viscerally disagree–I am definitely making progress.
All of this comes back to being connected to and surrounded by wonderful people. For a long, long time, my relationships were mostly one-sided: I listened and gave, and others talked, shared their worries, problems, and grief. I did not often find myself sharing with them my on struggles and challenges, choosing to bear my own burdens and “suffer in silence.” I gave much more than I received. And while there might appear to be some nobility in this approach (“’tis more blessed to give than to receive…”), it is also short sighted, ill-considered, and sometimes downright arrogant and selfish. It took me getting knocked to my knees a few years ago to really get me to a place of being able to ask for what I need–and I’m still not very good at it. It is an act of selfishness to not offer others an opportunity to be blessed by giving, particularly if they are people to whom I’ve extended myself to help. What I found out when I was struggling was that I was surrounded by people who offered all kinds of support and help. And it wasn’t just family, though my siblings have been WONDERFUL during my tough times. It was all kinds of people, known and unknown to me who offered words of encouragement, tiny little gifts and blessings, and other offerings that sustain me to this day.
What I discovered is a wonderful kind of karma. All of the many little things I did, random or intentional acts of kindness to encourage and support people–both known and unknown–have come back one hundred fold, one thousandfold, in immeasurable ways. That is not why we are kind, compassionate, and caring in reaching out to others, but it is a wonderful unintended consequence. For the love of people, that which I give as well as receive, I am most exceedingly grateful.
