Grace Notes

WEBVTT
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Let's talk about 1968.
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And before you get comfortable, I should tell you that this is going to become a nicer conversation than the beginning might suggest.
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But we have to start somewhere.
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And 1968 gives us quite a place to start.
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Some years acquire a reputation, you know.
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We give them a personality.
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We remember them as the year everything changed or the year everything went wrong, or the year we'd would prefer never to experience again.
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Sometimes that judgment's personal.
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The rest of the world may have had a perfectly satisfactory year, but you didn't.
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But sometimes a year seems to keep handing everybody another reason to say, what no?
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1968 was one of those years.
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Twenty-three days in, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, an American intelligence ship, and captured its crew.
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The surviving crew members would remain prisoners until December.
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Think about the length of that.
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Everything else we're about to talk about happened while those men were still being held captive.
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At the end of January, the Tet Offensive began in Vietnam.
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Americans had been hearing assurances about progress in the war.
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Then they saw widespread attacks and devastating fighting.
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Whatever the military outcome of individual battles, the offensive shook confidence in the story people had been told.
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There was the war itself.
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And then there was the growing question of whether the people explaining the war could be trusted.
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On April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr.
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was assassinated in Memphis.
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A man who had spent his life insisting on the possibility of change through nonviolence was murdered.
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Grief and anger spread across the country.
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Riots followed in American cities.
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People died.
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Buildings burned.
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Troops were deployed.
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And the loss was larger than one terrible day.
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People lost someone who helped them imagine a different future.
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In May, France was shaken by student protests, clashes with the police, and strikes that spread through the country.
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Millions of people stopped working.
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Factories, transportation, ordinary public life was just completely disrupted.
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This was not a year whose upheaval stayed politely within national borders, okay?
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Then, shortly after midnight on June fifth, Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles.
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After wounding the California Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary, he died the following day.
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Two months after King's assassination, another major American figure was gone.
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Another family grieving, another crowd stunned, another possibility for the future suddenly cut off.
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In August, Soviet-led forces invaded Czechoslovakia.
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The Prague Spring had brought political reform and the possibility of greater freedom.
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Tanks arrived to establish the limits of that possibility.
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And later that same month, the Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago.
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Outside the convention, demonstrators and police confronted each other on August twenty-eighth.
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Police violence against protesters unfolded before television audiences.
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People sitting in their living rooms watched Americans being beaten in American streets while a national political party met to choose its presidential nominee.
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So there you are.
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War, captivity, assassinations, cities burning, strikes, tanks, violence on television, arguments about what was true, who could be trusted, and where any of this was going.
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And beneath the headlines, all the ordinary difficulties continued right on.
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People still got sick.
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Families still argued, somebody still lost their job.
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Somebody still sat alone at a kitchen table trying to figure out how they were going to get through tomorrow.
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History doesn't suspend your personal problems while it attends to the bigger ones.
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It just adds more.
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By December, you can imagine people being ready to put the year down.
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Enough.
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Whatever else you have for us 1968, perhaps you could keep it.
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And then three men left Earth.
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On December 21st, 1968, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders launched aboard Apollo 8.
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Their destination was the moon.
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And they weren't gonna land on it.
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That would come later.
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They're gonna travel there.
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Orbit it and come home.
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Which, you know, when you say it quickly, sounds almost manageable.
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Travel to the moon, go around it, return.
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There are errands that I find more complicated.
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But of course, this was an extraordinary undertaking.
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Three human beings were going further from home than human beings had ever gone.
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And on Christmas Eve, they entered lunar orbit.
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And during that journey, they saw Earth rising above the lunar horizon.
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We know the photograph.
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It's called Earthrise.
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A bright living world above a gray landscape surrounded by darkness.
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We've seen it so often that we can forget how unfamiliar that view once was.
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People had maps, globes, pictures of portions of Earth from space.
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But here was the place everybody lived, seen by human beings who had traveled to another world.
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Everybody you loved was there.
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Everybody you disliked was there too.
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They made the trip into the photograph without asking.
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All the arguments, all the borders, all the armies, every kitchen, every hospital.
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Every person who thought their particular corner of the world was the center of everything.
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There it was.
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On Christmas Eve, the astronauts broadcast from lunar orbit and read from Genesis.
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People listened to human voices coming from the vicinity of the moon.
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After your year in which so much had divided people, there was something people could watch together.
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They could be astonished together.
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For a few minutes, there was room for another feeling.
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Apollo eight returned safely on December twenty-seventh.
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And among the messages Frank Borman received was an anonymous telegram.
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It said, Thank you, Apollo Eight.
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You saved nineteen sixty-eighths.
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Somebody down the way the messing up is third cord is down the right and you haven't fixed me.
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I haven't fixed you.
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Welcome or welcome back to the Anne Levine show with Michael over there.
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I'm Michael over there.
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Hello.
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You saved 1968.
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That is quite a thing to tell somebody.
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And obviously, the person who wrote it understood that the astronauts had not gone backward through the calendar repairing everything.
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King was still dead.
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Kennedy was still dead.
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The war continued.
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The grief was real.
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But something had been added.
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Something beautiful.
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Something astonishing.
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Something that gave the end of the year a different feeling.
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The year now contained that too.
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I think about that telegram because it manages in a few words to describe something that can be surprisingly difficult to explain.
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A terrible experience can remain terrible.
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And a moment within it can still change how you carry it.
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And that brings me to grace notes.
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In music, a grace note is a small ornamental note added to a phrase.
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You don't have to read music to understand the effect.
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You can hear a melody played plainly, and then hear a musician add a little turn, a little movement, something that, you know, gives the phrase another quality.
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But the basic mem melody, you know, it's there, remains recognizable.
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But there's no more feeling there in the way that it reaches you.
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And I've been thinking about the human version of that.
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The little thing somebody adds, a gesture, a kindness, a moment of beauty, an unexpected acknowledgement.
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Something that may be in the larger, you know, scale of events, it might be small, but enormous in the experience of the person receiving it.
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And small, of course, is relative.
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Apollo 8 was an immense achievement.
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Calling it a grace note doesn't make the achievement smaller, though.
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I'm thinking about the place it occupied that year and the emotional meaning it acquired for someone who sent a telegram.
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Against everything else that happened that year, it gave the year a different sound.
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There are quieter versions.
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You can do everything required of you and then add a little more attention.
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You can complete the transaction and make the person feel welcome.
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You can say goodbye and give somebody a reason to smile after you leave.
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Sometimes the effect is immediate, you know, you know, you know, right away when someone has made an awful day easier.
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Sometimes you remember it 20 years later and realize you've been carrying it all that time.
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And sometimes the responsible person has no idea.
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They've gone on with their life, and you're still remembering what they did.
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On April 9th, 1865, Robert E.
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Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S.
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Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
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The meeting belongs to the, of course, enormous story of the Civil War, but there's a smaller detail in it that interests me.
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The surrender terms allowed Confederate offers to officers to retain their keep their private horses and other personal property.
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Lee explained that some of the enlisted men who owned horses and mules allowed those men, claiming those animals, to take them home.
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He understood that they would need them for farming.
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For spring planting.
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And that's the detail I want to stay with.
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The spring planting.
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After all the marching, the fighting, the casualties, and the destruction, there would have to be another season.
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People would have to grow food.
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Grant also arranged for rations for the hungry surrendered army for twenty-five thousand of them.
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These were practical decisions made with immediate consequences.
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A man could go home with the animal he needed to work his land.
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Hungry men could eat.
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None of this settles the larger history or erases what the Confederacy fought to preserve.
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We can acknowledge a humane decision without losing sight of the cause of the war.
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But at that particular moment, the victorious commander considered what the defeated soldiers would need.
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That ability matters.
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When a conflict ends, somebody has to think beyond the final argument.
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What happens tomorrow?
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What will people need in order to live?
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Even in our, you know, much smaller disagreements, we can become so occupied with winning that we forget.
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There will be a mourning afterward.
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There will still be people.
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There will certainly be consequences.
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At Appomattox, among the documents and military arrangements, there was this consideration of a horse, a mule, a field, and another season.
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I find something quietly powerful in that.
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I mean, what happened was a little more local, more uneven, and more complicated.
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There were places where men stopped fighting and met between the lines.
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There were exchanges, conversations, opportunities to recover the dead.
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One documented episode involved the sixth Gordon Highlanders and German soldiers taking part in a joint burial service.
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A British chaplain and a German divinity student conducted it.
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Consider the scene.
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Men who had been trying to kill one another were now standing together to bury men who had been killed.
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They did not suddenly resolve the war.
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They did not agree on everything that brought them there.
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But for that service, they recognized a shared obligation.
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These bodies belong to people.
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They deserved to be buried.
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There's an extraordinary change in the way you see another person when you witness their grief.
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Someone who had existed mainly as a threat becomes a man standing beside a grave.
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You may not understand his language, but you can understand why he's there.
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The fighting continued, the war continued for years.
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And that's part of what makes the moment moving.
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The men could not guarantee what would happen next.
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They would they would still have to choose how to behave during the moment available to them, though.
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We often imagine that a worthwhile jester, you know, must solve the larger problem.
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But a shared burial did something real.
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It allowed dignity.
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It allowed mourning.
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It allowed briefly a different relationship between the people who had s been assigned to be enemies.
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That belongs in history too.
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Now to Berlin.
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The Soviet blockade cut off surface access to the western controlled parts of the city.
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And the Berlin airlift brought in food, fuel, and other essential supplies.
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It was a vast operation.
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Within it, an American pilot named Gail Halverson had an encounter with children outside the fence at Tempelhof Airport.
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He spoke with them.
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And when he looked for something he could give them, he found two sticks of chewing gum in his pocket.
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Two sticks for a group of children.
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Not much of a distribution system really.
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But he shared what he had.
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The encounter led to a promise to bring more sweets.
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He been he he started dropping candy beneath little parachutes.
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The idea grew.
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Other people helped.
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Candy and parachutes arrived from donors, and the effort became known as Operation Little Vittles.
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I love that freaking name.
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The planes were already carrying what people needed to survive.
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And then there were suites floating down for children.
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An addition.
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A pleasure.
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Something to anticipate.
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I like this story because adults can become very efficient about deciding what children need.
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Food, shelter, clothing, medicine.
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And of course, they do need those things.
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But children also need moments in which being a child is possible.
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A surprise.
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A treat.
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Something that lets the day contain more than waiting and worry.
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There's a difference between being sustained and being remembered as a person who might enjoy something.
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That difference applies to adults too.
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If you've ever been ill and somebody brought you what you needed, you know the value of practical care.
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And if they also brought the particular thing you like, you know what that addition can mean.
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They remembered you inside the situation.
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Halverson was part of an operation carrying enormous quantities of necessities.
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This other thing began with what happened to be in his pocket.
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Her voice could draw audiences and admiration across countries.
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Yet when she came to Princeton in nineteen thirty-seven, racial discrimination kept her from obtaining the hotel room.
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Think about that distance between public acclaim and private humiliation.
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People wanted to hear her sing.
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An institution still refused to accommodate her.
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Albert Einstein heard about her difficulty and invited her to stay in his home.
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That invitation began a lasting friendship.
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It's a very simple action to describe.
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He opened his home.
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But the circumstances gave that action its meaning.
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Somebody had told her, in effect, there was no place for her there.
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Somebody else made a place.
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Hospitality can carry a surprising amount of information.
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You are welcome.
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You can put your things down.
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You don't have to remain outside negotiating whether you deserve ordinary treatment.
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Come in.
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We know Einstein for many great things.
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The invitation doesn't require us to understand any physics.
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We know Anderson for a voice that people struggle to describe adequately.
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This moment doesn't require us to hear a recording.
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We can understand an open door.
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We can understand a closed door.
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And there are everyday equivalents.
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Inviting the person, the new person, to sit next to you.
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Making sure someone has a place at the table.
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Noticing that everybody else has found their group and one person is still standing.
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Sometimes belonging begins with somebody making a very practical adjustment.
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Another chair, another plate, a place to stay.
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This next story may be the smallest physical gesture in this whole conversation.
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Desmond Tutu recalled an encounter from his childhood in South Africa.
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He was with his mother, a black domestic worker, when a white priest named Trevor Huddleston passed them.
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Huddleston lifted his hat respectfully to her.
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How was it?
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A greeting, a courtesy.
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For Huddleston, something appropriate to do when encountering a woman.
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For the child watching, something startling.
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He lived in a society that treated black people as inferior.
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:01.440
And here was a white man acknowledging his mother with respect.
00:31:03.599 --> 00:31:07.039
Tutu remembered that impact into old age.
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.759
The movement of that hat would have taken seconds.
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:14.720
The memory lasted decades.
00:31:17.279 --> 00:31:22.720
This is why it can be difficult to measure the importance of what we do.
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:29.279
The effort visible from the outside may be tiny.
00:31:31.119 --> 00:31:34.000
But the person receiving it has a history.
00:31:35.279 --> 00:31:40.079
They've had other encounters that day, other encounters in their life.
00:31:41.839 --> 00:31:49.599
They may have become accustomed to being overlooked, dismissed, or treated as an inconvenience.
00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:52.799
Then somebody behaves differently.
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:55.440
The difference registers.
00:31:57.920 --> 00:32:01.279
You may think you're simply greeting someone.
00:32:01.759 --> 00:32:04.799
They may feel that they've been recognized.
00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:11.440
And a child standing nearby may learn something about what's possible between people.
00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:19.039
We do not control every meaning that our actions acquire.
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:22.319
But that's a reason to pay attention.
00:32:24.079 --> 00:32:28.720
There may be more happening in a moment than we can see.
00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:30.640
You take drugs, Danny?
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:31.119
Every day.
00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:32.000
Good.
00:32:32.240 --> 00:32:33.119
So what's the problem?
00:32:33.279 --> 00:32:34.160
I don't know.
00:32:34.480 --> 00:32:35.359
I don't know.
00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:44.079
Long before Louis Armstrong became Louis Armstrong in the world's imagination, he was a boy in New Orleans.
00:32:44.799 --> 00:32:50.079
He worked for the Karnovskys, a Russian Jewish immigrant family.
00:32:51.279 --> 00:32:54.240
They lent him money to buy his first cornet.
00:32:56.640 --> 00:33:01.440
And now because we know the ending, it's tempting to make the story sound inevitable.
00:33:01.599 --> 00:33:04.240
Of course, you help Louis Armstrong get a horn.
00:33:04.480 --> 00:33:06.799
That seems an excellent decision.
00:33:08.079 --> 00:33:14.319
But they weren't lending money to a monument or a legend or a man whose recordings would be heard around the world.
00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:16.400
They were helping a boy.
00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:21.759
They knew the child in front of them.
00:33:23.759 --> 00:33:26.480
This is how encouragement usually works.
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:30.160
You don't have access to the future.
00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:34.640
You don't know whether the instrument will produce a world-famous musician.
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:42.000
You don't know whether the notebook will lead to a book or whether the person you're encouraged will ever do the thing professionally.
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:50.799
An instrument can matter to someone who plays only at home.
00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:56.400
A notebook can matter to someone who writes for themselves.
00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:04.000
Encouragement can give a person permission to take their own interests seriously.
00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:10.639
And the value of help doesn't depend on fame arriving later.
00:34:13.119 --> 00:34:18.639
Sometimes the practical obstacle is quite small from the perspective of the person who can remove it.
00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:27.840
From the other side, it may be the whole distance between wanting to begin and being able to begin.
00:34:30.320 --> 00:34:34.480
We remember Armstrong's cornet because of everything that followed.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:43.920
But the human moment belongs to an earlier time when someone decided a boy should have a chance to play.
00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:58.000
On December 23rd, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Fanny McCullough, whose father had been killed in the Civil War.
00:34:59.199 --> 00:35:02.159
Lincoln was presiding over a country at war.
00:35:02.559 --> 00:35:05.760
There were enormous demands on his attention.
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:09.760
He wrote to a grieving daughter.
00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:15.760
And what interests me is the way he addressed the experience of grief.
00:35:18.159 --> 00:35:22.239
He understood that she could not imagine feeling better.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:26.800
That's one of grief's peculiar powers.
00:35:27.920 --> 00:35:30.880
It can make the present seem permanent.
00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:38.480
People can tell you things will change, and you may understand the words without being able to imagine the experience.
00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:45.840
Lincoln offered reassurance from his own knowledge of sorrow.
00:35:46.079 --> 00:35:55.920
He wrote, The memory of your dear father, instead of agony, will yet be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart.
00:35:58.559 --> 00:36:00.719
A sad, sweet feeling.
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:06.480
There's room for more than one emotion in that description.
00:36:08.079 --> 00:36:10.159
The sadness can remain.
00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:14.480
The memory can acquire sweetness.
00:36:17.440 --> 00:36:23.199
I don't think comforting words work like a repair performed on another person.
00:36:23.679 --> 00:36:29.360
You can't reach into somebody's grief and rearrange it because you've found a good sentence.
00:36:30.159 --> 00:36:32.000
But you can keep them company.
00:36:33.679 --> 00:36:35.840
You can acknowledge where they are.
00:36:36.880 --> 00:36:41.280
You can offer the possibility of a future they can't yet picture.
00:36:43.519 --> 00:36:47.760
And you can resist the temptation to hurry them there.
00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:55.360
Sometimes the most useful thing you communicate is that their sorrow has reached another person.
00:36:56.159 --> 00:36:57.679
It's been heard.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:09.280
A president writing to a young woman that didn't change the course of the war.
00:37:11.039 --> 00:37:16.480
The letter occupies a small space beside the larger events, obviously.
00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:26.239
But that small space contains attention, experience, and an attempt to make someone's suffering a little less lonely.
00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:42.320
In nineteen sixty nine, Fred Rogers shared a little waiting pool with Francois Clemens, who played Officer Clemens on Mr.
00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:44.079
Rogers Neighborhood.
00:37:44.480 --> 00:37:46.480
They cooled their feet.
00:37:47.119 --> 00:37:48.719
A simple scene.
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:56.239
But American swimming pools had been places of racial exclusion and confrontation.
00:37:56.639 --> 00:38:02.960
The sight of a white man and a black man sharing that water carried meaning.
00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:08.239
And what I like about the scene is its ordinariness.
00:38:09.599 --> 00:38:10.880
Here are two people.
00:38:11.119 --> 00:38:12.239
It's warm.
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:13.519
There's water.
00:38:13.840 --> 00:38:14.880
Come sit down.
00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:23.840
Children watching could encounter the image as part of ordinary life in the neighborhood.
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:28.960
Belonging was something they could see practiced.
00:38:30.719 --> 00:38:34.639
This is one of the things we communicate through our everyday behavior.
00:38:34.960 --> 00:38:36.480
Who gets welcomed?
00:38:36.800 --> 00:38:38.159
Who gets listened to?
00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:40.400
Who's allowed to be comfortable?
00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:45.360
Who is treated as someone whose presence makes sense?
00:38:46.559 --> 00:38:49.119
Children notice those arrangements.
00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:51.840
Adults notice them too.
00:38:52.639 --> 00:38:56.239
We learn from the way people make room for one another.
00:38:57.920 --> 00:39:04.960
A little pool on a children's television program can become an image people remember for decades.
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:15.360
Again, the gesture's scale and the gesture's meaning are different measurements.
00:39:19.039 --> 00:39:25.280
Satako Sasaki survived the atomic bombing off Hiroshima as a very young child.
00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:30.079
Years later, she developed leukemia.
00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:35.440
During her illness, she folded paper cranes.
00:39:37.119 --> 00:39:39.360
She died in 1955.
00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:47.280
Her story's kind of widely known, but I want to stay with what happened afterwards.
00:39:49.760 --> 00:39:54.559
Her friends and classmates helped begin an effort to create a monument.
00:39:56.880 --> 00:40:06.800
The Children's Peace Monument was unveiled in Hiroshima on May 5th, 1958, honoring children who died because of the atomic bombings.
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:10.400
And people continue.
00:40:11.119 --> 00:40:14.800
They continue to bring folding folded cranes.
00:40:16.079 --> 00:40:21.440
Something a child can make with their hands, something that requires a little time and attention.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:31.760
There's a particular tenderness in young people trying to decide what to do with the loss of a friend.
00:40:35.039 --> 00:40:36.639
They can remember her.
00:41:02.719 --> 00:41:04.480
The offering continues.
00:41:06.159 --> 00:41:08.559
Remembrance often works that way.
00:41:09.599 --> 00:41:18.800
A photograph displayed, a recipe made again, a name spoken, a story told to someone who wasn't there.
00:41:20.159 --> 00:41:25.360
These acts allow life to remain present in the life of other people.
00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:34.239
And sometimes an act begun by a few people becomes something generations continue.
00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:48.079
Now, after astronauts, generals, famous musicians, presidents, I want to I want to bring this a little closer.
00:41:49.280 --> 00:41:53.519
Because most grace notes probably never make it into a history book.
00:41:54.320 --> 00:41:56.320
They happen in kitchens.
00:41:57.039 --> 00:42:04.400
At the door, in the car, in a conversation that neither person thinks to write down.
00:42:05.760 --> 00:42:08.559
Somebody remembers how you take your coffee.
00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:10.559
And I mean remembers.
00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:14.559
You don't have to provide the instructions again, you know.
00:42:16.400 --> 00:42:21.679
Your particular way of liking a small thing has found a place in another person's mind.
00:42:23.280 --> 00:42:25.760
Somebody saves something for you.
00:42:27.199 --> 00:42:28.559
The piece you like.
00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:30.400
The last of the desserts.
00:42:31.039 --> 00:42:32.960
Something they saw in a shop.
00:42:34.400 --> 00:42:37.280
They saw it and thought of you before you were there.
00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:41.760
That can be a lovely thing to discover.
00:42:44.079 --> 00:42:45.599
Somebody makes room.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:52.000
They scoot over on the bench, pull up a chair, shift their belongings.
00:42:53.039 --> 00:42:55.920
They change the arrangement so you fit into it.
00:42:58.079 --> 00:43:00.880
Somebody knows us you haven't spoken.
00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:10.639
A group can be they can become a very efficient machine for allowing the same three people to keep talking.
00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:15.440
And then when a person turns and asks you what you think and waits.
00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:19.280
The waiting is part of it.
00:43:20.239 --> 00:43:24.000
Otherwise, we've simply added another question to the noise.
00:43:25.679 --> 00:43:27.599
Somebody asked how the appointment went.
00:43:27.679 --> 00:43:29.280
You mentioned it days ago.
00:43:29.599 --> 00:43:31.039
They remembered.
00:43:32.559 --> 00:43:37.920
And now you know that a detail of your life remained with them after the conversation ended.
00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:43.199
There's practical kindness too.
00:43:43.519 --> 00:43:46.079
Someone carries the awkward thing.
00:43:46.559 --> 00:43:49.599
Someone sees you looking for your glasses and hands them to you.
00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:50.719
Thank you.
00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:57.519
Someone takes care of a small task because they know you have more than enough to do.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:43:59.599
Sometimes they ask first.
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:04.559
Sometimes they know you well enough to understand what would help.
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:08.960
And sometimes the grace note is restraint.
00:44:10.159 --> 00:44:13.199
They notice your mistake and tell you quietly.
00:44:14.239 --> 00:44:17.280
They allow an awkward moment to pass.
00:44:18.480 --> 00:44:23.280
They don't turn your embarrassment into the entertainment portion of the afternoon.
00:44:23.679 --> 00:44:26.079
That can be an enormous gift.
00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:34.159
You may never thank them for it because you may never realize what they chose not to do.
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:41.360
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass.
00:44:44.800 --> 00:44:46.880
And I'm all out of bubblegum.
00:44:47.119 --> 00:44:50.239
Here's another way to recognize these moments.
00:44:51.119 --> 00:44:54.800
The practical purpose of the encounter has already been served.
00:44:55.039 --> 00:45:00.159
The meal's been made, the information's been delivered, the visits ending.
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:03.440
Then somebody adds something.
00:45:04.639 --> 00:45:07.519
A meal comes with your favorite little extra.
00:45:09.199 --> 00:45:12.960
A message includes a sentence that makes you feel remembered.
00:45:14.719 --> 00:45:19.440
A goodbye includes a moment in which nobody is rushing away.
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:23.679
Someone waits until you're safely inside.
00:45:25.039 --> 00:45:28.400
Someone stays inside with you while you wait.
00:45:30.960 --> 00:45:34.719
Someone knows something beautiful and they share it.
00:45:34.880 --> 00:45:36.079
Look at that bird.
00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:37.519
Look at the sky.
00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:39.199
Oh, you have to taste this.
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:40.800
Listen to this part.
00:45:42.719 --> 00:45:46.320
We invite other people into little pleasures all the time.
00:45:46.639 --> 00:45:50.079
And it's easy to underestimate that invitation.
00:45:51.840 --> 00:45:55.920
A moment ago you were occupied with whatever was going on in your own mind.
00:45:56.159 --> 00:45:59.440
Then someone drew your attention to something worth enjoying.
00:45:59.679 --> 00:46:02.400
Now your day contains that too.
00:46:04.159 --> 00:46:08.320
A funny picture arrives because someone thought it would make you laugh.
00:46:08.559 --> 00:46:11.039
They have imagined your reaction.
00:46:12.719 --> 00:46:17.519
They've taken a moment to deliver a little pleasure to you.
00:46:18.239 --> 00:46:21.360
This attention is traveling across a distance.
00:46:21.920 --> 00:46:24.559
We have very convenient ways to do that now.
00:46:24.880 --> 00:46:27.440
We can send a photograph in seconds.
00:46:28.639 --> 00:46:32.320
Convenience does not make the thought behind it meaningless.
00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:34.800
Somebody still thought of you.
00:46:35.760 --> 00:46:38.159
Somebody still decided to share.
00:46:53.119 --> 00:46:55.280
Somebody tells a joke.
00:46:55.599 --> 00:46:57.679
You let yourself enjoy it.
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:00.559
Somebody shows you something they made.
00:47:00.719 --> 00:47:01.360
You look.
00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:06.880
You give it enough attention to understand what they're offering.
00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:10.800
Somebody tells you a story they've been waiting to tell.
00:47:11.039 --> 00:47:14.239
You don't immediately replace it with your own.
00:47:14.559 --> 00:47:18.159
You allow their story to occupy the room for a while.
00:47:19.199 --> 00:47:23.599
You know what it feels like when our effort, you know, reaches another person.
00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:27.039
They laugh, they notice, they remember.
00:47:27.280 --> 00:47:29.280
They ask another question.
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:35.039
And we know what it feels like when the effort seems to fall through the floor.
00:47:36.480 --> 00:47:39.280
So receiving can add something as well.
00:47:40.320 --> 00:47:42.320
A little enthusiasm.
00:47:42.960 --> 00:47:44.800
A specific thank you.
00:47:46.400 --> 00:47:50.079
A response that makes it clear you saw the care.
00:47:52.480 --> 00:47:54.000
That was thoughtful of you.
00:47:54.239 --> 00:47:55.599
Can be true.
00:47:57.280 --> 00:47:59.360
You've remembered that I like this.
00:47:59.679 --> 00:48:02.559
Tells the person exactly what reached you.
00:48:03.519 --> 00:48:06.559
And sometimes we are uncomfortable receiving.
00:48:06.960 --> 00:48:07.599
I am.
00:48:09.679 --> 00:48:11.360
We dismiss the compliment.
00:48:11.599 --> 00:48:14.480
We explain why the gift was unnecessary.
00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:17.679
We insist that nobody should have gone to any trouble.
00:48:17.840 --> 00:48:20.320
But yeah, I understand that impulse.
00:48:21.679 --> 00:48:26.639
But occasionally we can let the trouble be something another person wanted to take.
00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:31.840
We can allow them the pleasure of having made us happy.
00:48:32.159 --> 00:48:34.079
That's part of the exchange.
00:48:38.639 --> 00:48:45.280
The difficulty with things that happen regularly is that regularity can make them disappear into the background.
00:48:46.559 --> 00:48:49.440
Someone always makes sure you have what you need.
00:48:50.239 --> 00:48:52.159
Someone always asks.
00:48:53.119 --> 00:48:54.800
Someone always waits.
00:48:56.800 --> 00:48:58.559
At first you notice.
00:48:59.679 --> 00:49:01.920
Eventually you come to expect it.
00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:06.960
The kindness becomes part of the way you believe the day naturally works.
00:49:07.599 --> 00:49:12.719
And then when it's absent, you discover how much was being added.
00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:16.559
There was a person doing that.
00:49:18.719 --> 00:49:20.960
There was attention behind it.
00:49:22.239 --> 00:49:27.599
There was a choice repeated so often that it began to look like part of the furniture.
00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:35.039
I think this is one reason it's useful to look at ordinary life a little more carefully.
00:49:36.480 --> 00:49:38.000
Who makes it easier?
00:49:38.159 --> 00:49:39.599
Who makes it warmer?
00:49:40.719 --> 00:49:43.119
Who notices the thing you forget?
00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:48.880
Who adds a little pleasure without asking for recognition?
00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:52.719
Sometimes the answer will be someone close to you.
00:49:53.920 --> 00:49:56.960
Sometimes it'll be a person you know only briefly.
00:49:57.280 --> 00:49:59.440
A stranger who gives you the time.
00:50:00.559 --> 00:50:04.559
Someone at a counter who treats your confusion gently.
00:50:06.159 --> 00:50:10.880
A person who sees you're having a difficult moment and adjusts their tone.
00:50:11.599 --> 00:50:13.679
They may never know your name.
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:15.840
You may still remember them.
00:50:17.679 --> 00:50:20.719
And perhaps you've been that person for somebody else.
00:50:21.039 --> 00:50:22.480
You might not remember.
00:50:23.599 --> 00:50:24.480
They may.
00:50:29.199 --> 00:50:31.039
Here's a thought I like.
00:50:32.239 --> 00:50:36.159
Somewhere there may be a person carrying a memory of something you did.
00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:39.360
That you've completely forgotten.
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:42.960
You said something encouraging.
00:50:43.760 --> 00:50:45.360
You included them.
00:50:46.639 --> 00:50:49.840
You helped them through an awkward few minutes.
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:53.840
I don't know, you behaved as though their present mat presence mattered.
00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:56.800
For you the day continued.
00:50:57.679 --> 00:51:00.159
For them the moment acquired a place.
00:51:03.360 --> 00:51:08.079
We often look for evidence that what we do has an effect.
00:51:09.119 --> 00:51:11.440
Sometimes there is evidence.
00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:15.599
Sometimes the effect belongs to someone's private life.
00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:17.760
And you'll never get the report.
00:51:19.840 --> 00:51:23.039
The priest tips his hat, and the child remembers.
00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:27.840
A family lends money.
00:51:28.159 --> 00:51:29.920
A boy gets an instrument.
00:51:31.280 --> 00:51:34.320
Someone opens a door and a friendship begins.
00:51:36.800 --> 00:51:40.400
We know those particular stories because they became visible.
00:51:42.000 --> 00:51:47.280
But there must be many others that remained entirely between the people involved.
00:51:48.719 --> 00:51:52.400
The absence of a record does not make them less real.
00:51:56.320 --> 00:51:58.559
I want to come back to that telegram.
00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:00.400
Thank you, Apollo eight.
00:52:01.039 --> 00:52:04.000
You saved nineteen sixty eight.
00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:09.760
What do you think this sender meant by saved?
00:52:12.800 --> 00:52:25.280
Perhaps that the year had become easier to remember Perhaps that after so much grief and violence there was finally something magnificent to look toward.
00:52:28.400 --> 00:52:32.719
Perhaps it meant um I needed that more than you could have known.
00:52:34.880 --> 00:52:37.679
We can't ask the anonymous sender.
00:52:39.679 --> 00:52:41.760
But we can recognize the feeling.
00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:45.440
A day's been difficult.
00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:47.039
Someone does something.
00:52:48.880 --> 00:52:52.079
The day becomes a day in which that happened too.
00:52:53.920 --> 00:52:55.760
A period of your life has been painful.
00:52:55.920 --> 00:52:57.119
Somebody stays.
00:52:59.519 --> 00:53:03.199
You remember the pain and you remember the person who stayed.
00:53:06.239 --> 00:53:09.360
That's one of the reasons these moments matter.
00:53:09.519 --> 00:53:11.360
They become part of the account.
00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:14.320
They give us something to carry.
00:53:16.159 --> 00:53:19.119
Most of us will never travel around the moon.
00:53:20.960 --> 00:53:25.119
Our available materials are considerably more locally based.
00:53:26.800 --> 00:53:29.440
A chair, a cup of coffee, a message.
00:53:30.079 --> 00:53:31.039
A little time.
00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:34.639
The willingness to remember what someone told us.
00:53:36.400 --> 00:53:40.239
The willingness to notice that they could use a moment of care.
00:53:42.880 --> 00:53:47.840
And sometimes simply the willingness to share something lovely while it's happening.
00:53:50.239 --> 00:53:52.559
You don't need to know whether the moment will last.
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:54.159
You can offer it anyway.
00:53:55.840 --> 00:53:58.800
Perhaps someone's done that for you recently.
00:53:58.960 --> 00:54:01.280
Perhaps someone did it years ago.
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And you still remember.
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Perhaps you've been doing it for someone else without giving it a name.
00:54:10.079 --> 00:54:11.360
A little addition.
00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:17.119
A change in how the phrase reaches us.
00:54:18.880 --> 00:54:25.679
Something that lets an ordinary moment hold a little more tenderness.
00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:28.239
When it's all too a grace note.
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And hey, feeling just as before the day's over, there'll be an opportunity.
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Sometimes I close my eye.
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And imagine who you'll be.
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Maybe a friend I have in there that somehow sets me free.
00:54:56.719 --> 00:54:58.480
Maybe just by putting a light on.
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I'll find you.