Two Minutes

About two miles from our home, there is a really cool, ethical grocery store. There are three grocery stores a lot closer--and when walking, two minutes versus thirty makes a big difference (especially with the baggage en route home.) When Jennifer or I are feeling particularly energetic, we sometimes give each other a fun little smile which means, essentially, Want to go for the Far Grocery Store? That really cool, ethical one?

And when embarking upon such journeys to the Far Grocery Store--loaded up with either our hiker's backpack, a bike trailer, or canvas bags to lug the food home in--we kind of feel adventurous. Watch out, Indiana Jones, here comes the Reynolds Grocery Trip.

There are all kinds of obstacles along the way...

*Sudden rain! Bam! Quick, run, take cover, launch the umbrellas! No, no, feel the rain! Yes, yes, become one with the rain!

*Sudden hail! Bam! Quick, run, take cover. Yes, yes, take cover, this stuff stings!

*Tired four-year old! Bam! Quick, run, take cover! No, no, wait, stay, hoist him onto the shoulders, forward march!

These outings to the Far Grocery Store always feel like a Thing To Do. Not just a quick bop in for the list, but rather an all-out grocery-store hullabaloo, an activity, a main event. And Jennifer, Tyler, and I usually come home exhausted.

However, this past Monday, we had a first on a Far Grocery Store trip. About ten minutes into the walk / scooter back home, Tyler stopped scootering and boldly announced, "I have to do a pee straightaway."

So I asked what every parent asks their four-year old in this kind of situation: "Can you hold it?"

Tyler looked up at me, breathless and as if to show rather than tell his answer, he danced a little jig right there by his scooter.

I looked back at the super-cool, ethical Far Grocery Store shimmering in the distance. They have a super-cool, ethical, clean bathroom.But ten minutes walk back? In the opposite direction!? That would mean the ten there and then the ten all over again to get back to where we were, only much more exhausted. So, we're really talking fifteen back, and then twenty back to here.

Forward. Got to move forward.

So I calculate again and recall that there's a small divergent path off the sidewalk at one point up ahead, where Tyler used to pee when he was potty training and we happened to be out and about. That divergent path was, say, by my calculations, approximately, maybe...fifteen minutes up ahead.

I knelt down. "Hey little man, can you hold your pee for a little longer?"

Tyler looked up at me and said, "How long?"

And some sort of Parenting Instinct to Lie must have kicked in, because from the very marrow of my being came the words, "Two minutes."

Two minutes!?

Two Minutes!?

Immediately I thought back to my own childhood, whereby I would ask my lovely mother all kinds of time-oriented questions:

"Mom, how long until we can go to the comic book store?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until school starts?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until I can eat that cake?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until I can drive a car?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

It seemed instinctual. Everything was two minutes. The Christmas Tree farm five towns over where we drove to get our Christmas tree each winter was 'two minutes' away. The rest of the cleaning should only take 'two minutes.' Everything would be better in...

Tyler looked up at me with the faith of a child. "Okay, Daddy, let's g. But let's go SUPER-FAST!"

We sped up and off and into the horizon.

Ten minutes later, Tyler said, "Daddy, I have to do a pee SUPER BAD, straightaway!"

I looked up ahead and I could begin to make out that beautiful divergent path. Yes! We could surely make it there in...

"Two minutes, son! We can do it!"

And off we sped, time-warping ourselves forward to the safe-peeing zone, and then making it there just as my son's bladder was about to erupt.

Before my high school graduation in Windsor, CT many years ago, the then-Superintendent of Schools shared a quote that went something to the effect of: "He who is victories is usually he who can hold on just thirty seconds longer."

At the time, I thought, very powerful philosophy of sticking it out, hanging in there even when it feels like you have to quit.

But after Tyler and Two Minutes, I find myself thinking--now wait just a couple of minutes: just how long are these thirty seconds?

And I wonder if, sometimes, God is watching all of us, knowing exactly where the best Pee Spots are, and kind of telling us, "Hey buddy, just hold on for two minutes--just two more minutes." Because maybe, like a parent, He knows if he told us, "Look, it's going to be a long, long time before that wall breaks" we'd kind of crumple to the ground and just fall apart.

Two minutes can sometimes be a very, very long time. Two minutes can be an eternity. But I know that however long two minutes' takes, it's always worth the excitement of the adventure, the rush for the finish line, the joy of the journey. And when we arrive to that Pee Spot or Promised Land--sweaty and bladders bulging--I wonder if two minutes suddenly feels short once more.

Please Do Not Park on the Verge

Every morning on my paper route, I ride past a tall telephone pole on which is posted a sign that reads: PLEASE DO NOT PARK ON THE VERGE. Zipping past, I've never really thought much about it until today. It's in the moments when we feel we can't keep pushing forward that seemingly insignificant things take on momentous value. People giving a thumbs-up, a smile and a chat, a sign on a telephone pole. These are the things the paper route has taught me, and today, after I gave my two weeks' notice as we prepare to begin our transition back to the states this summer, a sign spoke the words on which I desperately needed to ruminate.

Maybe you do, too.

If you find that you're on mile 23, running and feeling the burn along your calves, the strain inside your thighs, the stinging circling your stomach--don't stop. Now is not the time to take a breather, wait and see, wonder the thousand what ifs your mind seems always ready to proffer. Now is the time to keep moving forward. Please, don't park on the verge.

If you find that you're parenting as best as you can, and certain patterns feel so hard to change, and you have so many questions about what you need to learn to do better, what kinds of behavior you're teaching, why your kid shares sometimes and sometimes hoards, why a temper tantrum happens when the day looks bright--don't doubt. Now is not the time to question your ability as a mother or a father, your commitment to growth, or your unconditional love. Keep moving forward, doing the best you can, but understanding that you are never going to get it right every time. No one does. Please, do not park on the verge.

If you find that you're chasing a dream, and yet rejection is chasing you, and calls come that are so close you feel the whisper of their tender-hearted declines--don't lose faith. Now is not the time to take it easy, sit back in your chair, and ponder other avenues or possibilities. Now is the time to work through the closeness until it gets closer and closer. Now is the time to lean into the wind that blows you back, using its own force to make your forward movement that much more determined. Please, do not park on the verge.

If the character arc you're traveling seems oddly void of worldly goods--be it money, fame, praise, prestige, success, respect--don't change course and seek signposts that point towards results over work, product over process. Now is not the time to consider what your bank account could have been, what your status could have been, where your voice might have travelled. Now is the time to get down on yoru hands and knees and watch a bee on a flower; now is the time to realize and fully grab hold of that ancient truth that the work itself is the reward for the work. The joy of the journey is itself the reward for the journey. The love with which you hear and respond to the people all around you is the greatest possible fruition you can fathom. A kiss on the cheek of an elderly woman when you feel like crashing down, a wave to a neighbor, the example of a wife who keeps on giving so generously to a homeless shelter, to friends, to anyone in need even though her own battle is fierce--these are the signposts of love. These are the acts of triumph. Hold onto these. believe these. trust these and keep moving forward. Please, do not park on the verge.

Among everything you are up against, remember that love triumphs if you only choose to keep moving forward. Love your wife. Love your son. Love the people whose paths you find yourself crossing. Let this be your legacy. Not a bullet-point list on a resume. Not a checklist. Not fears of inadequacy nor worries about accomplishments. Let the sheer fact that you never stopped moving forward be all the bullet points you need.

Please, do not park on the verge. Cross over it, believing that the triumph lies in this feat and no other.

George Saunders on Enduring Hardships Along the Way

Lately, I've been re-reading the interviews within Keep Calm and Query On--and I've been overwhelmed by the gratitude I feel towards these authors for sharing so much of their writing journeys. Inspired by the pluck and determination of the 14 authors whose interviews appear in the book, I wanted to share some snippets of their wisdom here. Up first is a powerful (and funny) answer from fiction writer and essayist George Saunders on writing your heart out, realizing you might have been wrong, but then writing your heart out all over again.

Can you recall any moments when you felt particularly discouraged as a writer? What helped to sustain your belief in your work and in yourself on these occasions?

There were certainly times where I should have felt discouraged but even at those low points I was arrogant or hopeful or deluded enough to put the bad news behind me pretty quickly, I think.  I once wrote a 700-page book about a Mexican wedding of a friend of mine, which was called La Boda de Eduardo.  Roughly translated: Ed’s Wedding.  Enough said.  That one took about a year of work and lots of late nights at a time when we had a new baby at home and I was working full-time.  So when it turned out to suck, that was a hard blow.  But in my heart I think I knew it sucked, so it was also kind of a relief—to find out I was right re. the sucking and that my taste was still active, so to speak.  And also a relief to put that book (or, libro, as I might have called it back then) behind me and move on to something more worthwhile and...alive.  There is something so wonderful about writing in a way that feels new and authentic, that feels in line with your true taste – trying to get that to that place is like seeking the Grail.  Whatever hardships have to be endured along the way, are fine – part of the larger quest, if you will. Although – I didn’t feel that way the day after La Boda de Eduardo went in El Garbago.

I'm Not...

Tonight, after a busy day and a busy weekend, Tyler lay in bed clad in Batman pyjamas swinging his legs back and forth. "I'm not tired Daddy--I have so much energy I could jump from my bed all the way up to the moon!"

Jennifer and I had spent most of the weekend outside with Tyler, watching with giddy, childish excitement on Saturday as he attempted a tall wobbly ladder-obstacle-course-thingy over and over again until he could do it; scootering to church on Sunday, then running and playing soccer in the backyard, then jumping on the tiny trampoline that our lovely neighbors gave us, then playing with various Imaginary People, then convincing various Imaginary People that it was, indeed, time to eat dinner, then convincing various Imaginary People that it was, indeed, time to take a bath, then convincing various Imaginary People that it was, indeed, time to go to bed.

The thing about Imaginary People is that they are incredibly useful allies in the journey to Try and Get Children To Do What You Want Them To Do.

Our two favorite Imaginary people are Mr. McGooga and Lucy. Mr. McGoogal is a 70-year old man who walks around with a duck on his head. (The duck can never be removed, even when he goes to sleep or takes a bath.) Mr. McGoogal always does things in an opposite or highly strange manner: he wakes up at night and goes to bed when the sun rises; he brushes his teeth with mud; he walks around naked outside and then puts on all his clothes for bath time; he eats dessert first and dinner second; he picks his nose and his butt (often simultaneously); he inevitably goes the wrong way when attempting to go anywhere.

Our other favorite Imaginary People Person is Lucy--who is almost two years old and cries often, always wants her own way, and consistently doesn't know what to do (other than knowing that she doesn;t want to do what her Mommy and Daddy think she should do).

Tyler often needs to correct what Mr. McGoogal does, or explain to Lucy why doing something she wants to do isn't necessarily the right thing to do at the moment. When tired, Lucy and Mr. McGoogal begin to sound an awful lot like one another--but when awake, they are so good at what they do (imaginarily) that they often make very real changes in Tyler's decisions.

(Sometimes.)

Because at other times, even Imaginary People (no matter if they have ducks on their heads) can't even convince a four-year old that he should go to sleep.

Other times like, say, tonight.

While jumping to the moon did sound like a lot of fun, doing so would have caused an inevitable extra half-hour (including blast-off and then landing, plus the blast-off and landing back on Earth), and Tyler had already woken up early this morning. Jennifer and he had drawn endless pictures of beautiful things, I had done the paper route, and even thought the grumps made a few appearances, Jen and I gave one another that wordless, knowing parental look which said quite loudly: Early bedtime tonight?

Yes.

Yes.

Except, as Tyler lay in bed swishing his legs back and forth, attempting to start an uncanny amount of new option for what could be done instead of sleeping, even the star-studded prowess of Mr. McGoogal and Lucy could not be of aid.

And tonight those immortal, bold, four-year-old-mastered words came crashing all around me like a layer of bricks covered with sawdust that had been previously coated in a thick layer of mud which may, possibly, have had traces of dog poop mixed in. On the edge of exhaustion, and bereft of any real hope from Imaginary People.

"I'm not tired!"

I'm not tired!

I'm not tired!

So I did what any patient, kind, warm, loving, gentle, endlessly hopeful father would do. I pretended to be asleep.

"Daddy, did you hear me? I said, I'm not tired."

More pretending to be asleep. And I threw in a big yawn with my eyes closed tight because, hey, I was that sleepy.

Tyler stopped talking to me, then began swishing his legs louder and faster and louder and faster and--

Singing. We've got singing. Loud singing, with more leg swishing, back and forth and back and forth, and then the singing and the leg swishing began to work in unison, forming an even more imposing wall of Mud/Poop-Coated-Bricks that were crashing, crashing, crashing all around me and the singing and swishing and is he veer going to fall asleep because he REALLY needs it because he is SO OVERTIRED and what's with even the IMAGINARY PEOPLE not even working!!!???

And as I continued to pretend to be asleep, a decrescendo occurred. A glorious, melodious decrescendo. And then, a small bit of quiet, and then two beautiful words: "I'm not..."

And that caesura--that beautiful poetic silence--cause me to wake wide up from my pretend sleep and look full at Tyler's face. There my boy lay, peacefully sleeping like the overtired, exhausted child that he was.

And it dawned on me in that moment that Imaginary People are amazing. They're beautiful and helpful and downright giddy fun. But reality is also pretty great, too. Because a lot of us adults aren't much different than four-year olds--swishing our legs back and forth, trying to convince ourselves that we're not tired,  not sad, not in need of help, not in need of love, or a kind word, or hope, or just a little bit of truth.

It's hard to admit stuff. It's scary and we're afraid that we'll miss out on good things if we admit the truth. If we're sad, we wonder if it means we made the wrong choice. If we endure failure and suffering, we fear others will tell us we walked into it ourselves. If we travel through confusion, we worry others will direct our steps rather than simply love us through the unclear trail.

So we say things. We say, I'm not sad or I'm not tired or I'm not battling some pretty severe heartache or I'm not depressed or I'm not scared.

But the thing is, we are. The fact that we're members of the human family essentially guarantees that we're all of these things sometimes (hopefully not all simultaneously, though, because that would even freak out Mr. McGoogal).

But once in a while, we find a space where we can let a caesura slip into our exteriors. We find that place or those people with whom we can pause just long enough to allow the silence to create a space authenticity and love have a chance to breathe. Sometimes, we find ourselves saying just two words: I'm not...

And we pause, because we know we are. And knowing we are gives others the chance to hold our hands, fix their eyes, and respond with love. Maybe then we stop all our nervous leg swishing and fall into a deep sleep. And when we wake, the world looks new again.

After

Like half-broken branches
Our arms hang limp.
We see the sun but cannot reach out
And pull it towards us--
Cannot hold its light with our limbs.

But a thousand leaves open.
Palmed pupils dilate with
The determination that comes from
Feeling light before we see it,
Finding strength before we feel it.

And suddenly the soul that ferries
Water in our roots knows:
We will branch out once more.
New buds will emerge to hold
That same sun, now brighter than before.

Duck, Duck, Soar

A few days ago, on the first house on the morning paper route, I saw a limping duck on the front lawn. Another duck walked beside it, as if to protect it from any would-be villains. I stopped immediately, holding the Daily Mirror for house number 153 in my hands, and watched the limping duck.

One of his legs was bent a bit, though as he sensed my presence it used that bent leg as best he could to flee me. I began to wonder what kind of number I could call about a duck with a bum leg. Who could help? And would it be good if I tried to pick the duck up and bring him somewhere--some kind of medical facility or some local guy who happens to be a Healer of Birds or a retired vet who might be looking for things to do because, hey, retirement is maybe a little more boring than it's cracked up to be.

My mind tracked back ten years, when my oldest brother Chris and I found a sparrow with a broken wing on somebody's lawn one day when we were out for a run. We watched the bird and finally managed to scoop it up, then run back home. We called about a hundred people from the yellow pages, before one of the vets gave us a number for somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who fixed birds.

In his backyard. Seriously.

So we got in the car and drove the hour to the Backyard Bird-Fixer Guy (who happened to be blind). We gave the guy the bird with the broken wing, and he held the bird in his hands, told us he was feeling for the heartbeat, and then said with a deep sadness in his voice that it wasn't good news.

That sparrow died, and I remember feeling crushed. Why? It was, after all, just a bird. Just a sparrow. But the time we spent with that sparrow, the numbers we called, the drive we took--all of it was imbued with such hope, and when we finally met the blind Backyard Bird-Fixer, my storytelling mind was already seeing a beautiful narrative arc to that adventure. Not so.

So as I watched the duck with the bum leg limp away from me, I wanted this time to be different. Sure, the world is a big place and there gender injustice, domestic abuse, children that need families, slavery, trafficking, violence, misogyny, and so many other tragedies to work against. But a few days ago, on my morning paper route, this was this duck.

This duck with a bum leg limping away from me. And for some crazy reason, this duck was what I could see and this duck was what I wanted to fix--some tiny living thing I wanted to see healed. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was because I needed this duck to be whole again.

Maybe it was because--surely--my heart considered that if I could manage to locate a Blind Backyard Bird-Fixer yet again (this time in England) the narrative arc of this story a decade later would be different. Hope would win.

And then Surprise showed up. Because as I watched the limping duck, and the healthy duck, a car door slammed close by us, and both ducks spread their wings and lifted off the ground and reached up into the sky and sailed towards the River Ouse, a half mile away.

The duck with the bum leg had two wings that were strong and beautiful and bold and capable. And this duck didn't need to be fixed. He was going to make it as is: imperfect, broken, himself.

I suspect there are a lot of us limping around somebody's lawn, and maybe people take a look at us and think, I wonder if there's some guy somewhere who fixes people like that? And if we limp around long enough to listen to the voices that say we're too broken to get up where the air is a little thinner, the view a little better, maybe we start to believe them.

But once in a while something comes along and surprises us. It wakes us up. It gets our hearts beating just fast enough that we remember something deeply important: we can still soar. So maybe we reach out our two beautiful, bold wings, and we feel the wind lift us higher and then we head for thee rushing water.

Where, after all, we can float and a bum leg can't even be seen.

Today, may be remember what the poet Dennis Brutus claimed--that though tenderness may be frustrated, it "does not wither." Tenderness survives, and the soul aches to send us on an adventure beyond somebody's lawn. The soul aches for surprise.

Our Throwaways

As a kid, I loved going into my dad's workroom to try and build something. In my mind, the vision of what I would create with hammer, nails, and wood was magnificent--we're talking seamless symmetry, profound usage ability, all-around-wow-factor. The kind off thing I could bring in for Show and Tell to my second grade classroom with Mrs. Schwartz at John F. Kennedy Elementary School and watch all my classmates gaze and say, Dude, how in the world did Luke actually BUILD THAT?!

The reality of what I made during those workroom visits was, however, much different. One time, I tried to build a wooden rocket ship that would put NASA to shame. Instead, the pieces of my dad's scrap wood that I nailed and wood-glued together ended up looking more like a porcupine that swallowed a sink pipe than a rocket. Bent nails protruded from the thing and glue beaded around all it's edges. It's jagged sides all over could have sliced an onion or two or 343.

And my attempt to paint over these severe lapses didn't much help, either. Rather than make the thing look more like a NASA rocket, the paint had the effect of highlighting each mistake in a new and vibrant color.

So, as my seven-year old eyes examined what I had created and held it against the image of what I had wanted to create before I began working, I picked the whole thing up and dumped it in the trash barrel that sat below my dad's workshop desk.

The next day, it was sitting on top of the desk.

When my dad came home from work at Cigna in Hartford, I asked him how my failed attempt at a rocket made it out of the trash and onto his work desk.

"I love it, Luke, and I'm keeping it right there."

I didn't know what to say in response.

Fast-forward about a quarter of a century to this morning. My own four-year old sits at Jen and I's writing desk in our closet/study, crying. He's holding a piece of paper on which he has drawn airplane windows. He has stapled the end of the paper into a nose, and he has taped various parts of the paper to try and form landing gear.

But the paper has ripped, and the staples are coming out, and the tape is sticking more to itself than the intended plane. And so Tyler's tears are profuse.

"I'm throwing this away because it's all NOT GOOD."

And the tears.

Suddenly, all I can see is the rocket I tried to build so many years ago. The rocket I threw away.

So I pull Tyler onto my lap and I tell him the story of my wooden rocket, and how I thought it was so, so, so, so, SO bad. When I tell Tyler about what Bubba (my dad) did, and how the rocket sat proudly on my dad's workshop desk the next day, Tyler looks up at me through his own wet eyes.

"Really?"

"Really."

I pick up Tyler's airplane and hold it in my hands. "To me, son, this is beautiful. I love it."

The thing is: Jen and Tyler and I went back home for a visit this past summer. After two years away from America, everything felt new again. The backyard in which I grew up playing kickball and building forts and going on various missions felt oddly soaked with mystery and joy and possibility again.

And when Jen and I and Tyler set ourselves up for a week in my parents' basement, I sauntered into my dad's old workshop.

There, on his work desk sat my wooden rocket. Its nails still offensively bent out at every angle, the paint still highlighting each mismatched side and each bubbling ball of glue.

For the part twenty-five years, my throwaway has been my dad's inspiration.

So often, we make the mistake of thinking that it is only our successes, the images of perfection in our heads, our achievements and our triumphs that are memorable and meaningful. And sometimes, these things are meaningful and memorable.

But sometimes, it's not the image in our heads that matters, but rather that imperfect practicality that works outward from our hearts to our hands. We believe in something, we go for it, we create it as best we can. And should we hold the authentic creation up in front of us and feel defeated because it doesn't match the perfect image, we might do well to remember that our throwaways could end up being someone else's prized visions.

W.B. Yeats wrote in his poem When You Are Old, "How many loved your moments of glad grace / And loved your beauty with love false or true. / But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face." I once recited these line to my wife, because I could find no better articulation of what love is. Real love concerns itself not with the perfections we find in one another or in our own creations. Real love is concerned with the pilgrim soul; real love is concerned with loving the wounds in one another, in ourselves, and in the stories we make and live.

25 years later, I am finally proud to close my eyes and see the image of that rocket I built--with its jagged edges and bent nails. Perfection wouldn't have been anywhere near as beautiful, or as memorable.

Today, may we seek to find the pilgrim souls in one another--to love each other not for the precision with which we think, live, or act--but because we've got our own host of jagged edges and bent nails. And may we seek to see our stories through the lens of the pilgrimage we're on rather than the distance between us and an image of success.

I'm thankful that I've now got a beautifully stapled, taped, and marker-drawn airplane on my desk to remind me.

What Binds Us Together

So a few weeks ago, on a particularly dreary early morning, I was doing the paper route while bemoaning a lack of sleep and a particularly annoying case of the runs. I made it halfway through the route--to house number 18 on a small cul-de-sac--and in the window near the front door I saw a very old woman, sitting in front of the morning news on her television.

As I came up to the door to push the newspaper--The Times--through the mail slot, she looked up at me. Clad in mismatched winter hat and gloves and stay-at-home-daddy-fleece pants and a large puffy coat on which I wore a bright florescent orange vest (the British marketing campaign for safety paramount), I smiled through the window at this 80-ish-year-old woman.

Through her thick glasses and early morning eyes, the woman broke into a smile.

So I smiled even wider back at her.

Then she smiled even wider back at me.

Poised in our small dance of ever-widening smiles, the day suddenly became brighter to me. My stomach even felt calmer.

And then I did what any 32-year-old-American paperboy-living-in-England-while-writing-and-daddying-and-teaching-night-classes would do: I gave the old woman a thumb's up.

She slowly raised her arm and gave a thumb's up right back at me.

And everything was going to be okay. I knew it. Margaret (the name of the lovely lady, I later learned) knew it, too.

Fast forward to this morning, and Tyler is on the paper route with me. The deal is: he can come on Friday and Saturday mornings because he doesn't have any pre-school on those days, and so the hour and a half walk doesn't exhaust him before a day of playing knights and castles and galloping with other four-year olds.

We made it halfway through the route, and then an absolute gem of a lady, Claire, comes running out of the Bed & Breakfast she and her husband, Bob, own (The Adams House B & B). Poised in each of her hands is a bacon sandwich: one for me, one for Tyler. We smile wide and thank Claire and Tyler looks up at this lovely lady and says, "It's delicious!" I repeat the words.

And when we're finished with the paper route, we make it back to the little corner store to drop off the florescent yellow bag (safety in florescence!) and Amid is behind the counter. Amid and I usually chat for five or ten minutes after I drop off the bag, but this morning he's particularly amused by Tyler's amazement at a Spiderman magazine on the front counter of the shop.

Spiderman!

Amid laughs while Tyler swoons, and then Amid reaches into his pocket, pulls out the pound that the magazine costs, and says to Tyler, "Here you go, little man, I buy this for you. Okay? This good?"

Tyler looks back at Amid with the stunned shock of great joy. Then he looks up at me as if to say, Daddy, could this really be true? Could life be THIS amazing?

And I smile back at my son, then at Amid, and I think, Dang straight. It's true.

Because what binds us together isn't the fact that life is hard. Yes. Life is hard. Life is going to give us circumstances and situations and walls that we can't see past. Life is going to make us question ourselves and our dreams and our hopes. Life is going to sometimes mock us and laugh at us and hurt us and make us think that there's just no way we're going to be able to keep moving forward.

But that's not what binds us together.

From the pages of Crime and Punishment to Middlemarch to War and Peace to Things Fall Apart to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to Okay for Now to Mockingbird to Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities--what binds us together as humans is the response of small kindnesses, little acts of courage, tiny decisions to help one another to keep moving forward.

From the small village of Orica, Honduras, to the big city of Moscow, Russia--from Marlborough, Massachusetts to Dehra Dun, India to Flagstaff, Arizona to York, England, what I have seen and what I know to be true is this: all of us are facing battles that we sometimes feel are too big for us. All of us are facing situations around which we can't always seem to wrap our hearts. But when one person--one single person--smiles at us with sincere kindness in their eyes, that battle becomes just a little bit easier.

When one single person gives us a thumb's up, or rushes out into a frosty morning with a bacon sandwich, or buys a Spiderman magazine--that battle suddenly becomes more clear, more manageable, more hopeful.

Because despair makes its living in a solitary way. Despair wins when we don't let others in--and when we don't reach out to others as well. Philo said it best when he exhorted: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is engaged in a battle." Jesus said it pretty dang well too when he said, "Love one another as you love yourself."

The small ways we show kindness to one another are what bind us together. These kindnesses can take the shape of seemingly insignificant acts--but each one wields a powerful blow to the wall of despair. Every tiny smile, every small nod of the head in belief and hope, every resistance to judge and mock another--these all translate to cracks in the walls life shows us. And as these cracks deepen and grow, the full force of hope is unleashed.

What binds us together isn't the very different, divergent ways we struggle against the pain of our lives. What binds us together is the small act of kindness that we give and receive. Though these acts of kindness may wear the mask of insignificance, in reality, they shake the very foundations of despair.