Thoughts on Kindness

I have been reading an amazing Carla Kelly book called "The Surgeon's Lady" and I can't help but want a Philemon Brittle (the hero) for myself. He brings something to the table that I and Laura Taunton (the heroine)lack in our lives and that is kindness.

It has been a long time since someone has told me "You look nice today." Or asked me if I was okay. It has been a long time since I have actually been noticed. I come to work and do what I'm supposed to do and that's the kicker of my job. If I do my job well then you really don't know that I'm there.

I feel like I'm disappearing that people can't see me anymore. It's a hard feeling to live with. I'm just fading away into the background. And really that means that I'm great at my job, but it's not so great for life is it?

It would be nice to receive e-mails or phone calls for no other purpose than to say "hey I thought of you today and wanted to talk to you."

I wonder if the problem is that we are so logged in. We communicate by e-mail and by text messages and Facebook statuses. We no longer value human contact. It's something that I am beginning to miss. I wish we would start to value human contact more. It makes us more human.

Philemon Brittle, who is a surgeon, gets that you can't just heal the body that you have to heal the mind and the spirit too. I think that these days we forget about the mind and the spirit. I would kill for someone to have intelligent conversations with. I really want someone to agree with me that Noah Charney is an idiot and that just by saying art theft is bad because it feeds organized crime is not good enough academic discourse. It's like saying "something evil makes people destroy culture." Well you're right it does, but does that really answer the burning question of why? But I have no one to talk to this about.

It's all about kindness and I think this world is lacking it. So if there is anyone out there that is missing the kindness of everyday human contact I have this to say to you:

"Wow! You look really nice today. Is that a new top?"
and
"How are you doing? Do you need to talk? Because I'm here and I'll listen."