The Little Things Matter

 

 

           It was a small thing.  It was so small that it shouldn’t have made me angry but it did.  It happened in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I stopped my car to let a pedestrian pass in front of me.  It was not in the area designated for passing pedestrians.  Even so, it was the right thing to do.

The pedestrian was a lady who appeared to be much younger than I.  As she crossed she did not acknowledge me.  She did not smile.  She did not give a small wave to say thank you.  She gave no response whatsoever.  That didn’t bother me in particular.  I do acts of kindness not for the appreciation and thanks but rather because it is simply the right thing to do.

What angered me was the pace in which she walked in front of me.  To say she was slow is to say that there are palm trees in Miami.  To a paraphrase the great baseball manager Tommy Lasorda, she was so slow that had she been in a race with a pregnant woman she would have finished in third place.

Not only was she slow, she did not walk the most direct line across the path in front of my car taking a more diagonal route.  All in all, it was about the most discourteous response to a courteous act.  I took it as a total act of incivility and disrespect.

As I later reflected on the incident, I’m quite sure that there was no malice involved.  I am sure she did not say that “I’m going to really hack off the old man in the Buick” before she ambled across my path.  Her mind, like mine at times, was probably elsewhere, thinking of the next errand she had to run, or about what she was going to have for supper, or about her sick aunt in the hospital.  Even so, her lack of courtesy angered me for a while.

 A number of years ago in New York, the city’s police department began using what was called the “broken windows” method of policing.  If someone was observed breaking a window or painting graffiti then they were arrested and prosecuted the same as if they had committed a more felonious act. Soon there were fewer broken windows and less graffiti.  More importantly more serious crimes also declined such as burglary, car theft, assault, armed robbery, rape and murder. Stopping the bad little things led to stopping the worse big things.

I thought about what happened in New York as I thought about the woman’s actions in Wal-Mart and it led me to wonder what kind of world we might have if we all just made a simple effort to be kinder to each other, to say please and to say thank you, to do the little things that seem unimportant but tell those with whom we interact of their importance and worth.  Simply put if we would make the effort to be kinder in the little things of life then perhaps the larger things that often make our world such a strife torn place might take care of their selves.

Rarely if ever do large things in life become small.  Oak trees do not become acorns. However, many things that start small can become very large.  Acorns do become oak trees.

Jesus said something very similar.  He said, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” (Luke 16:10 NRSV) The truth is kindness starts small and grows larger.

From where I sit it would seem that the key to harmony in this world starts with the little things in life.  If we take the time to simply be nice, be nice to the one who checks us out at the grocery story, be nice to the one who hands us our burger at the fast-food drive through window, be nice to the waiter or waitress or most importantly be nice to those with whom we share a home, how differently might our world look.

              Is that too naïve or simplistic? It might be.  However, it’s worth a shot.  There’s a song from the seventies that made its way into the United Methodist hymnal that says this “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”  I offer that for there to be peace anywhere on earth it has to start small. It has to start with each and every one of us. Peace might not always follow every act of kindness but without the acts of kindness we can never sow the seeds of peace.