March 07, 2024 – A

If we aren't getting kinder with age,
we are wasting our time.
What's more important than kindness?
Or, these days, scarcer?

Kindness is welcoming,
attentive,
and it listens.

Where do you go to find listening?

Everybody is everywhere expressing an opinion.
The opinion wars, I call it,
finding something not to like
about everything.
And everybody.

Kindness left years ago it seems.
Probably looking for a safe place to be.
I wonder what kindness would need
for a home,
and why it would be so hard to come by that.
When we all should have what it takes
to develop it
right out of our own gentle spirit.

How often do you bump into one of those?
Gentle spirits should be everywhere,
just like kindness should be,
but softness is just asking for it,
it seems.

Softness is vulnerability
and there are plenty of people
who will take advantage of those things
just for the sport of it--
bullying with sarcasm and ridicule,
being hateful and hurtful
because why not?

So we have to be guarded and careful
and keep our soft side to ourselves,
shutting our gentle spirit somewhere 
deep inside to keep it safe
in case we come upon good company
some day and can risk exposing it
to the light of day.

In the meantime,
the world of art, music and nature
is one of the best places I know to be
just to hang out and be free to be who I am
without having to toe some invisible line
or risk bringing opinions flying from all sides.

Trees are still good company,
and birds sing for the joy of it,
it seems.
I relish time spent with them,
looking forward to return engagements.

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