Tiny thought: The most menial acts of service

A few years ago I started to write and send these tiny thoughts from the notes app of my iPhone. It was during a stretch of time when I felt far away, cold and desperate for the warmth of a ray of soul.

Mostly the thoughts were provoked by these menial, miniature moments in real time, so easy to overlook and never turn back to again, that would somehow crack my heart open.

I have been thinking about those tiny thoughts lately and could feel the crack open this morning when I was at a workout class with dozens of women, all of us staring stone-faced into the same mirror while lifting our legs up and down.

Here we were, so seriously gazing ahead at ourselves, together but alone inside of the galaxies that live within each of us.

When it was time to get on the floor and lift, I picked up a mat and passed it to my neighbor before I went on to get my own. She smiled then I smiled back and suddenly it was like this fog lifted and I wasn’t alone in the room anymore. Maybe the fog went up faster than it came down because it had never really been there at all.

But I had this tiny thought as I could feel my heart open that sometimes the most menial gestures: a mat pass or no-strings-attached smile at a stranger, could be the thing to remind you, as it did today me, that from behind the stone face of your small galaxy, you are not here alone. None of us are.

Being in the physical world away from my phone feels so much like relief these days.