How Hard is Doing the Right Thing?
/I’m wrapping up my Spring Tour and heading home for two Wisconsin events this weekend. Being on the road can be tiring, but you sure do learn a lot when you are out of your comfort zone and making your way through unfamiliar territory.
One thing I have learned being on tour this past month is the importance of doing the “right thing,” according to your heart. In Texas a woman in the audience received a message from a grandmother who had passed. The grandmother was communicating such love and gratitude toward her granddaughter. She kept showing me bottles of nail polish, along with the emotion of her love. The granddaughter started crying, tears of relief mixed with joy, and told us that they’d had a difficult relationship. But after her grandmother crossed, she took actions that she felt were the “right thing to do.” She painted her grandmothers’ nails before laying her to rest, because the grandmother always had perfect nails and she wanted to honor her in that small way. Even though their relationship on Earth was not the greatest, the woman’s final small act of kindness paid off big.
When we leave hurts in the past and act with kindness towards those who have injured us, we create a whole new relationship. It doesn’t matter if the body is alive or dead--what matters is the love that is always alive.
There was a similar message at the group in Pennsylvania this weekend. A woman in the audience had taken care of an elderly family member who was quite demanding and picky before her passing. But in Spirit the elderly woman came through with so much love and gratefulness for the assistance she had received. Sometimes we don’t express, or maybe even feel, the deep sense of gratitude and love that people inspire in us until we actually cross over and see life from a bigger perspective.
The underlying theme with both messages is that when you choose to be kind, you don’t just change the world of the person you are directly relating to. You change the world as a whole.
Last week I spent a few days wandering the streets and subways of New York, which is honestly one of the best opportunities anywhere to see a cross section of humanity. In just minutes you can come across a massive disparity between standards of living. You may walk past someone who’s completely destitute and looking for hot food and, at the next turn, brush shoulders with someone wearing shoes that cost more than most peoples’ mortgage payments. I offered a genuine smile to everyone I could. I smiled widely at a distracted teenager sitting across from me on the subway (she probably thought I was crazy) and, minutes later, at a man dining with friends at a fancy lunch spot on the Upper East Side. (he looked alarmed, like maybe I might come in and ask him for money.)
One man I crossed paths with is still with me in my heart. It was Saturday morning, and I had just been to the market at Union Square. I was headed back to the subway. I could hear singing as I walked down the stairs to the train platform.
“All you need is love…”
It was an older black man, probably homeless or at least really struggling, with a small CD player. He was sitting on a bench, playing the Beatles and letting the world hear his deep, melodic voice.
“All you need is love….”
Smiling, I looked down the platform and saw a woman about my age grinning at the singer. She and I looked at each other, burst into laughter and started singing with him.
“All you need is love…”
Love is all you need, people. Everyone, without fail, is trying to overcome some hardship. On a completely crappy day, you can still receive a smile and some random kindness from this world. You can also choose to give it out, simply by lifting your eyes, turning the corners of your mouth up, and maybe even singing along.
©Mollie Morning Star 2015 Short excerpts of this article may be shared on the internet provided a live link back to this original source is used. Reproduction in print is prohibited.