Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Seersucker's avatar

I am so grateful to have managed to say Thank You to some of the people who looked after the hapless and clueless me in my late-teens and early-twenties -- *something* good must come from the internet and the ability it has granted us to track people down. But most of my benefactors are lost to me -- for instance the police officer who, after having caught me red-handed shoplifting at the 7-Eleven (the one time I ever stole anything besides food), and -- after I had stupidly and transparently lied to try to escape -- delivered a come-to-Jesus admonition that laid it on not a millimeter too thick, and then told me he hoped I had learned something and that he was going to send me on my way -- "It's a judgment call -- you seem like a good kid" he told me when I asked him, baffled, "why?" I have tried to "pay forward" some of this kindness and forbearance, though I am sure I am still in arrears. What your stories really drive home to me, though, is how entwined and interconnected we are. Who can tell me what parts of of what I have learned or loved from reading your sentences have come indirectly from these encounters and your reflections on them? And the fact that these people were able to rise to the occasion themselves also did not spring out of nothing -- whence did that woman's generosity arise, or that of the kind driver who picked you up hitchhiking? I sometimes think that every kindness I manage to do is not mine but only passing through me. I don't think this notion erases my initiative or my responsibility; but it gives me another occasion for gratitude. As does, it is fitting to say, this post. Thank you.

(Edit added later): Wanted too to say that the essay by Nabokov is one of my favorites by him, and I feel keenly the dilemma you sketch of how to say fitting or artful or moving things at a time when so much power is bent upon either turning the world into slag or making sure that we see only -- and perhaps turn into -- the moral equivalent of such slag. Keep the faith.

Expand full comment
Chin-Sun Lee's avatar

damn, mary. who knew this was something i needed to read, on the eve of thanksgiving, no less. it's been hard to wrap my head around the casual selfish cruelty this election revealed about so many among us; reading about these instances of kindness was a necessary reminder that there is another side. and i'd forgotten how much i love that four tops song. your entire last paragraph of this post really hit home. thank you.

Expand full comment
41 more comments...

No posts