Today I am getting on a tram (street car) going to an appointment. I've just returned to Prague from a long family vacation in the US. I'm feeling a bit drab and low about getting back into the routine of work. As I step on the tram, a little girl with her hair in a pony tail starts to move to a seat just vacated by a passenger who is getting off the tram. I am moving in that direction, so the little girl goes back to her mother's lap. I pass the seat and motion for her to take it. Her face beams with joy and she moves to the empty seat saying, "thank you" to me with great enthusiasm. Her gesture has made my day already, but during the tram ride she looks up at me and smiles again. As I prepare to disembark, I make eye contact with her. She smiles again and I say good bye. She waves to me as I leave.
Someone might suggest that I exercised random kindness toward here, but I assure you I was the one who was most blessed by her expression of kindness. Being on the receiving end of a great big smile from a cute little Czech girl in a city filled with people who regularly look right through you as if you were invisible is an enormous experience. Her kindness was a bright spot in my day. This was undoubtedly the work of the divine, whose image still resides in that little girl, though it might be distorted in her as it is in me. But, that was a glimpse of what we were made for, how we were made to relate to one another. Two perfect strangers from two different generations, products of two cultures sharing the joy of kindness.
Monday, August 25, 2008
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