In November, a few of us visited a local library to share stories around the themes of gratitude and kindness. A librarian there had invited us to speak with their community on those themes, in the spirit of the Thanksgiving and holiday season. We'd planned a presentation with a bunch of stories from experiments, like our school Kindness Circles, the love warriors in Teach Me To Be Wild, and even a gratitude card-making activity.

On the night of the event, it turned out that the audience ended up being quite an intimate bunch: two very sweet grandmothers in attendance. :) For us, it's always been more about depth than breadth:), and It ended up being the most beautiful evening! We scrapped our presentation and simply had a circle of sharing and conversation around all of our experiences in gratitude and kindness. The librarian actually had to (very kindly) kick us out of the library, since none of us could tear ourselves away from the conversation. :) We all left feeling elevated by something -- a spark of hope that comes from a sense of shared humanity. It was inspiring on many levels.

Afterwards, we stayed in touch with those two women -- and at the start of the new year, I received the most touching note from one of them:

I have to tell you about an act of kindness I saw yesterday at the Dublin Post office. I was at the counter with my transaction and a woman came up to the counter and gave the clerks a big tray of home made cupcakes. She just said Happy New Year to all of you and left. Of course there were a lot of smiles and the clerk even asked if I would like one. I thought you would appreciate hearing about that thoughtful act. Who would ever think of the ppl behind the counter at the post office?

I hope I can pass on something as meaningful in 2018.

So grateful to be a witness to some of the ripples of this ecosystem -- and the many seeds of gratitude that come to bloom in the most perfectly unexpected conditions, and in such disarming ways. :)