Month: December 2021

“You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.”

These words by poet, philosopher, and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson are good for all of us to keep in mind.  I recently had an experience where I was the recipient of kindness.

I needed to go to my job as a crisis line counselor and, because some of my hours are overnight, it was about 10:00 p.m. when I was leaving to drive there.  It had been snowing for a few hours and several inches had accumulated.  I had expected that the parking lot of the building where I live and the street leading out from there would have been cleared during the time I slept before going to work because that often had been the case other times.  But it hadn’t been cleared, or at least it hadn’t been cleared recently.  Because of the amount of snow and because there’s an incline for about two blocks before the street levels out, my car got stuck in the middle of the parking lot.  The conditions were such that the tires couldn’t get traction and just spun when I pressed the accelerator.  So I couldn’t even drive my car a few feet to the side of the parking lot so that it would be out of the way when the person came to do snow removal.

I called the on-call supervisor to ask if someone could cover my hours and that I would work that person’s hours another day.  But my supervisor said no one was available and she offered to arrange for a Lyft ride.  Unless the Lyft driver had four-wheel drive, I don’t think that person could have made it through the snow either.  And the idea of walking to where the street levels out and waiting for who knows how long for the Lyft driver in the dark and cold seemed like an unsafe thing to do.  I have friends who would have given me a ride to work in other circumstances, but I didn’t want to ask someone to take the chance of their vehicle getting stuck.

After sitting in my car a couple of minutes trying to decide what to do, a vehicle came into the parking lot.  The young man who was driving it got out and walked to my car and said he would try to help me.  After digging the snow from around my tires and much other effort, he and his fiancé were able to push my car out of the center of the parking lot to the side.  I told them I was on my way to an overnight shift where I work, and they asked me how far it was.  I told them about 10 miles and they offered to drive me there!  Unlike my small car, they drove a vehicle that was higher above the ground and had four-wheel drive.  What a wonderful gift that they were so generous to take the time and make the effort to do this for me, someone they had never met.

In addition to this being a kindness such as Emerson refers to, this experience shows the way that unanticipated help is given to us.  I had no way of knowing that people would drive into the area where my car was stuck, especially in the late evening in the cold and snow, and especially that they would be two people so willing to help me, even to the extent of taking the time to drive me to my job.  When I was trying to think of possibilities before they arrived—and the possibilities were extremely limited—I could not have expected that someone would show up to help me.  And yet they did.

I expressed my gratitude to them and I expressed my gratitude to the Creator.  Over the years, there have been other times when I received unexpected help, and I’ve heard and read other people’s accounts of receiving assistance that they could not have anticipated, assistance that occurred when they very much needed it.  All of us have received such help.  Help from the universe.

“Call it luck or fate if you will, this type of synchronicity has occurred so many times that I now take it as a principle that whatever I need will turn up if I am patient and have the awareness to perceive it.”

This is a quote by Robert A. Johnson, who was a Jungian analyst, author, and speaker.  He wrote several books about inner work, Jungian theory, relationships, and other related topics.  I have been reading his book Balancing Heaven and Earth, subtitled “a memoir of visions, dreams, and realizations.”

The quote above is from that book.  Those words appear after Johnson tells of how, when he was a young man, a friend saw that he was struggling. His friend gently pointed him in the direction that led to Johnson working with a Jungian analyst.  He writes that he didn’t realize how much he needed to do that until after the work began and that the analytical work led to other meaningful experiences.

Throughout the book he tells of other unanticipated occurrences that provided help and direction.  He refers to such synchronicities as the “slender threads” that have guided his life.  The title of one of the chapters says it well:  “Unexpected Friendships; Unexpected Blessings. Slender Threads at Work.”

In his memoir Johnson relates the full picture, never suggesting that things flowed along easily all the time.  Staying on our path and inner change always involve some challenges and adversity.  He shares times when he felt disheartened, without direction, and even depressed. But he had an awareness that something larger than himself was directing his life, and he shares many examples showing how that was the case.

As he says in the quotation above, patience and awareness are needed to perceive when help from the universe is given to us.  It’s essential that we set aside the idea that we’re in control of our destinies.  It simply isn’t true.  Holding on to that idea takes away our ability to be aware of when help is being given to us and thus our ability to embrace that help.  That is a great loss.