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Caring Matters
and sometimes it's all we have
Hello friends,
Here’s hoping you have a safe place to sleep. Here’s hoping you have enough food to eat. Here’s hoping you have enough surplus to share. And if you don’t? I hope you can find a network of other people who can offer help.
And I hope you have the courage to ask.
We all need to learn to ask for help when we need it. And we all need to learn what we have to offer. In a world that can feel harsh, it is easy to forget that most people care. Most of us want to offer help when and where we can. And there is no shame in needing help. There should be no shame in asking.
My latest Patreon-funded essay is on the simplicity and importance of mutual aid and caring for each other:
When I approached the pantry shelves, the only things on them were some sad radishes and one very mushy banana. The person walking away with the empty sack was a neighbor, hoping for food.
The person noticed us, and as we drove off, I saw them turn and head back. Hopefully they like Indian food, because that was what we left.
You wouldn’t necessarily look at my neighborhood and think there was food insecurity here. But you never know. Times are hard for far too many of us.
That neighbor has likely come to rely on whatever food gets dropped at the little pantry, just as the crows, opossums, and songbirds rely on the bird bath in our back yard and the water bowls I fill out front.
That neighbor has likely come to rely on a food source, just as I rely on the trees to give off oxygen, and the bees and wasps to pollinate the plants, and the soldier flies to lay their larvae in the compost heap, breaking down vegetable scraps to feed the soil.
Please read the rest of the essay here.
My friend and colleague Katrina Messenger says, “I you don’t have a surplus, you don’t have it to spare.” That means a surplus of time, energy, money, or other resources. Some of us consistently give more than we have. Still others of us think we have nothing to offer. But often, what it takes to offer something? Is curiosity and creativity. Don’t look at what you lack, and try to offer from there. Look at what you have, and ask yourself, “how can I offer this to the world?”
One example is simple: I take a lot of walks and love to photograph what I notice. I post those photos almost every day. As a matter of fact, I have a surplus of photos! Do you know how often I get notes from people, thanking me for posting those images? It’s a simple thing that people have come to rely upon. It’s a small thing that brightens their day. That’s me, offering something small. Something seemingly unimportant, because it is just a thing I do.
We all have things like that. To us, they seem ordinary, but someone else might really need that ordinary thing. We can be generous with what we have, but first we need to notice that we have it.
best wishes - Thorn
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