An Act of Kindness

To Whom It May Concern:

On a day long ago, on a street whose name can no longer be remembered, an act of kindness occurred that permanently and inextricably altered the course of a particular individual’s life.

This act of kindness, itself quite minor in the canon of possible human kindnesses, set into motion a series of events and synchronicities which, in hindsight, changed the course of history. When I say “the course of history”, I refer not to “history” in terms of the world economy or the rise and fall and nations or civilizations. I refer simply to the course of history as it pertains to a single human being, his life’s trajectory, and the multigenerational repercussions of his particular existence and the choices that shaped it.

One never knows what a simple act can engender, and there are moments in human intercourse when a word, a gesture, a facial expression, or a conversation can move mountains within a human soul, wherein the tectonic plates of emotion, memory and relationship grind together in such a way as to give birth to a continent never before felt by the human heart.

On this particular day, on that long forgotten street corner, an interaction took place. It was an interaction, however brief and seemingly innocuous, whose simplicity and apparent normalcy belied the fact that it shook this particular individual’s soul to the core, and his life---and the lives of so many others---would never again be the same.

Yours Sincerely


(c) 2008 NurseKeith