Kindness

“A Cup of Kindness, Yet”

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

I find the song Auld Lang Syne to be haunting and a bit sad. While hopeful it makes me think of loss. It may just be my emotional instability rearing its head. The tune causes the same reaction I have with the abused pet commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing. 

To make sure I get a good dose of sorrow, there is an American Express commercial using the old Scottish ballad, sung by India Carney. Her voice and the arrangement were created to make people stop and reflect…and shed a tear.  It’s a commercial Don, wipe your face.

I’ve been fortunate.  I have lost no close friends or family members to Covid-19 in this terrible year that threatens to run on into the new year.  This is not to say I have been unscathed. I have lost folk I didn’t want to lose, both family and friends. I have lost former acquaintances, coaching and teaching peers, and have had family and friends who were sick but should recover. My bride has not been as lucky. We have lost count.

” We’ll take a cup of kindness yet” together, I hope soon.  If you can read this, we have reasons to be optimistic and hopeful for the coming year and yet the commercial is on again and I’m misty eyed.

I battle with myself; the fearful me who wants to live as long as possible even if it is in isolation and the defiant me who thinks “Damn the torpedoes”. There is a small part of me who still thinks he is bulletproof.  I check too many “bad” boxes on my health sheet, so I am most assuredly not bulletproof.  I should remain the fearful…the smart one. Still my daughter and grandbabies call to me…as does the BBQ and beer at Green River BBQ.

Christmas is a few days behind me and the New Years a few days ahead.  I am conflicted and a bit melancholy.  I long for the days of childlike wonder when my father and mother were responsible for my happiness.  I do not like being the responsible adult…the adult in charge, the adult responsible for my happiness.  I turned the Christmas Eve responsibilities over to my daughter but the mental vision of social distancing and face masks on seven- and four-year old’s is not the last vision I wish to have. 

I am old enough for my wants not to hurt me and will spend the New Year’s Eve with my bride attempting to stay awake for the New Year’s toast and kiss…I should set a twelve am alarm.  A fire in the fireplace and a Jack Daniels instead of champagne, I will toast the new year, kiss my bride, eat a sausage, and cheese ball, and then say a prayer for the coming year…before sleeping my way into it.

Auld Lang Syne began its life as a poem attributed mostly to Robert Burns and written in what has become such an obscure Scottish language that most English readers can’t comprehend it.  It is quite possible Burns was motivated by an earlier ballad written by James Watson.  The tune is an old Scottish song of unknown origin.  The standard version, what we sing after the “ball drops”, is much easier to understand.

The first verse goes

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

Chorus:

For auld lang syne, my dear,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

While it does not specifically translate, Auld Lang Syne translates loosely to “for the sake of old times” and old times is where my mind goes.  My visions are of old friends or family gatherings, making a toast to those we have lost and those who remain.  A toast to the better times we hope will come. 

I visualize party goers on black and white film, the ladies dressed in shimmering gowns of unknown colors and the men in old high collar shirts, tuxedos, waistcoats, and narrow bow ties.  They hold champagne flutes and kiss as balloons fall before singing Auld Lang Syne. 

I am captured in an old Thirties or Forties movie from “the good old days” of the Great Depression or World War Two.  I don’t believe New Year’s Eve 2020 will be considered one of the good old days any more than the days of the Great Depression were, and I fear 2021 will simply be a redux of 2020.  Like those from “the good old days” there is hope.

Maybe we will be able to safely gather next year but whether we do or not, let us raise “a cup of kindness yet”, not just at twelve am on January 1st, but for all of 2021 and the time we have remaining.  We are in control of our kindness and it cost nothing.  Kindness is free but is worth its weight in gold.

I offer you the following toast credited to Alfred Lord Tennyson.  In a pandemic year with a contested elections and conspiracies theories on galore, it seems appropriate.

“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow.

 The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.” 

I repeat, “Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

Happy New Year my friends, Happy New Year.

India Carney from YouTube

One of your New Year’s resolutions should be to read more starting with “Long Ride to Paradise”, my latest release. Download to Kindle or purchase in paperback. As usual it is free with Kindle Unlimited.

OPTIMISM DESPITE SCIATICA AND 2016

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I find it interesting, in a bad way, that I am finishing 2016 the same way I began it…limping to the finish line while battling sciatica. The pinching of the sciatic nerve because…well…WHO THE F@#$ KNOWS…all I did was reach across my body with my right arm to pick up a hammer. OKAY I GOT IT…sciatica is caused by work. Now I know how to cure it.

My particular brand of sciatica runs across my left ass cheek and down my left leg…in other words, it is the “royal pain in the ass” and for me a physical reminder of what a pain in the ass 2016 was…except on a personal level it really wasn’t that bad. I lost my favorite uncle and several friends, but I have a family and friends whom I love, food on the table, a roof over my head even though, in order to heat the rooms under that roof, it cost me an arm and a leg…and the sciatica triggered by spitting wood to begin the year of 2016. All and all I ain’t got it that bad…except for the sciatica and a tractor I want to set on fire…kinda like 2016.

I won’t miss 2016…unless 2017 is worse. Worse? 2016, the year of political witch hunts and the hatred that fed it, religious and racial divisiveness, war and rumors of more war, fake news or real news, defining who should have the right to marry and who is what gender along with arguments that will never give love a chance…STOP IT DON! JUST STOP IT!

Yes, at midnight December 31, if I am still awake, I will kiss my significant other passionately and, with great enthusiasm sing “Auld Lang Syne”, Robert Burns’ poem now set to the tune of a Scottish folk song. The reason I will sing enthusiastically are the words, “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

Despite the divisiveness and pain of 2016, I face 2017 with the renewed enthusiasm that “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet”, the kindness that was sorely absent in 2016. I am optimistic we will ALL reach across the gulfs that are our differences and find understanding. I am offering you “a cup of kindness yet” in hopes you will take it, along with a hand of mutual friendship, respect and mutual understanding. In other words, because Burns said it better than I ever could “And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And give me a hand o’ thine! And we’ll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne.” For those of you who are saying, “that’s like world peace, it will never happen,” I say, “There has to be hope. Someone has to make the effort.”

Whether you are a “taste great” person or a “less filling” person, in 2017 I will raise a toast to you, even though I don’t drink lite beer ever. Here’s to you and yours with the hope you have a productive, prosperous and kind new year. May peace be with thee!

A GIFT OF CONSTANT KINDNESS

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

This morning a previous “memory” from the year past was presented to me on my Facebook wall. A red baseball cap with the message “Make America Kind Again” scrawled across its crown. As I attempted to re-share it and put my feelings into words, I touched the wrong key and it disappeared. I hope this was a coincidence of bad keyboarding and not something ominous.

As the year 2016 ends and 2017 begins it doesn’t require a quantum physicist to realize kindness has been in short supply. Kindness is not something that JUST happens or something we should take for granted. Kindness can’t be enacted by our leaders, a bill debated in the various “hallowed” halls of government until it is passed into law. Kindness is a virtue that must be passed forward by “we the individuals.” Kindness is also a virtue that many of us, me included, simply give lip service to as our actions show anything but kindness. Somehow it is as if kindness and compassion have become traits of weakness instead of the traits of strength I continue to read about in the Bible…especially during this time of year. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has been changed by some of the more paranoid of us to “Do unto others before they CAN STICK IT to you”

There is an ODD thing about kindness…it doesn’t have to cost anything and yet it can be priceless. A smile, a nod of the head, opening a door for someone, waving at someone or just acknowledging the fact someone is alive dumps copious amounts of naturally occurring opioids into our blood stream.

Another ODD thing about kindness…it is the height of selfish motivation. Selfish? Yes, selfish. Why do we do something kind for someone? IT MAKES US FEEL GOOD therefore IT IS a selfish motivation…a wonderfully human selfish motivation which explains why “it is better to give than to receive.”

My best friend and I walk together one day a week. Exactly seven point one miles beginning exactly at five thirty in the morning. Why exactly seven point one miles at exactly five thirty in the morning? Because it’s easier to deal with my own OCD tendencies than dealing with his. It also explains why we walk only once a week. We are former teachers and coaches and a lot of our conversation is about kids and athletics but much of it is about our religious beliefs. Mike, the traditional Baptist who has rediscovered his way, and Don, the nonconformist follower of Christ with Buddhist leanings. We have some interesting conversations as dawn breaks across our landscape.

After discussing my concerns about the state of kindness, Mike sent me a devotional he had studied entitled “Constant Kindness.” He had circled “In a world in which love has grown cold, a kindness that comes from the heart of God is one of the most helpful and healing things we can offer to others.” I would just add the love we can offer from our own hearts.

With all of the selfishness and kindness I can muster, “Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays” to all along with the hope that each of you will pass it forward, not only for this season but for 2017 as well. May your God Bless.