Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the small uncaring ways.
— Stephen Vincent Benet
One of the best ways, it seems to me, to determine your spirituality — the meanings and values by which you live — is to ask yourself the question, What do I really care about?
Recently I took some shirts to the laundry, as I do quite regularly. It is a family-run business and over the years I have come to know the family members who work there. This time I noticed a couple of my shirts had buttons missing. The woman who owns the laundry noticed the missing buttons too and offered to replace them. "Wonderful," I said, "Yes, please do."A week later, when I went to pick up my shirts, I noticed that she had indeed carefully replaced the buttons — matching them exactly — but was not charging me for the work. I called it to her attention. "Oh, no," she said, "I am happy to do it for you."
Her single act of caring made me notice, in that moment, something else about her. She was caring in everything she did: her gestures, her words, her work, her sewing, her counting of the shirts, her handing me the package, her smile, her making change.
I noticed too, from my many brief visits, that she also cared about friendly, competent service, doing more than she was paid to do, being generous, her family.
She is not missing life. "In all the small . . . ways," she cares.
— David Kundtz in Quiet Mind