I remember once being at a party at a friend's apartment when I noticed, in the middle of the room, a woman of about eighty who had the most beautiful face. More than that, a beautiful light shone through, making her appear even more beautiful. I had to find out who this woman was. I eventually inched my way close enough to her to talk to her. We chatted for a while, and in the course of the conversation she told me about a game she and her husband played every day, and what a difference it made in their lives. She called it the Lift Game.

They would try to find a way to lift up the people they met. When she passed by the doorman in her building, the newspaperman down the street, the lady in the grocery store, she always had a smile and a kind word.

She told about being in Macy’s one day, and trying to deal with a salesclerk who was in a terribly negative mood. She was determined to get the woman to smile. Then she noticed that the woman had beautiful teeth, and she commented on them. The woman broke into a huge smile. 

You never know the difference a kind word or a little smile will make to somebody else. Remember, everyone is fighting a tough battle. We can do more than we know with simple kindness.

I have been bothered of late by something I saw on a recent CBS 60 Minutes broadcast. Two lawyers from the Midwest were defending a position they had taken. The more they were pressed on their position the more they tried to say they had done the right thing.

A man has been in jail for thirty years for a murder he did not commit. These two lawyers knew from the beginning he was not guilty and didn’t do anything about it. Their client had committed the murder and because of the confidentiality agreement between lawyer and client they said nothing. They admitted that not a day had passed in all of these years that they had not thought about the innocent man languishing in jail.

Tim Russert, of NBC News, wrote a book about his father, whom he called Big Russ. The book is about his relationship with his father, who was quite representative of blue-collar workers in an era of a generation ago.

The book generated considerable interest, and as a result Tim Russert received thousands of emails and letters from people telling of their relationship with their fathers. One of the most poignant letters came from a man who wrote about something he learned from his father when he was eleven years old.

They were walking on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when they stopped in front of a funeral chapel. They were talking about baseball and other things of interest to an eleven-year-old boy, when his father asked what was happening as people were filing into the chapel. The boy said, "Why, they are going to a funeral."

The other morning, while riding down on the elevator (I am always amazed how much conversation can happen on an elevator ride), a woman who always has a happy countenance got on.  To match her upbeat manner, whenever I see her I greet her with a hearty, “Good morning.  It’s good to see you.  You lift my spirits.”

This time she said to me that although she always tries to present a cheery face, “the tears come down anyway.”  With her index fingers she touched her eyes and followed a path down her cheekbones toward her neck.  At that point the elevator got to the lobby and we got off and went our separate ways.

The other morning while I was eating breakfast my wife was scanning the lead stories in the newspaper.  She uttered an “oh no!”  “What did you read?” I asked.  Patrick Swayze, a favorite actor and a man that she had met on several occasions, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Then she said, “Arthur, life is so very fragile, isn’t it?”  And it is.  We don’t know what a day will bring—what tragedy, what loss, or what hurt.

Understanding that life is fragile means to me that we are wise to keep our relationships in good repair.  How many of us wish we had been more attentive with parent, relative, friend, that we had spent quality time with them, that we had said something more, or uttered some forgiving word.

The pigeon seems to be everywhere in the city.  I have yet to hear someone say how wonderful is the pigeon. People will talk about even a sparrow in better terms. Pigeons seems to be regarded as a necessary nuisance.

When I had a cottage on a Maine island my long walks would include time on a beautiful crescent-shaped beach. Often I would sit on a rock to take in the scene. I would see duck families swimming in the water, sea gulls drifting with the wind or gracefully landing in the sand.  I would see swallows, watch sandpipers with fascination, and enjoy the sight of the beach grass along the edges of the beach.

One morning I saw a pigeon on the beach. I said, “What are you doing here?  Go on! You’re disturbing the beauty of my morning experience.”

There’s a common malady running rampant in the 21st century that might be called the “rushing syndrome.” We rush to work…we rush home…we even rush to stop rushing. But we don’t stop until we have a full-blown case of physical and mental exhaustion – the rushing syndrome. Something is wrong and we know it. The symptoms are a sense of futility and dissatisfaction, worry and fatigue due to overwork in trying to get somewhere fast without a clear set of directions. The person who has the malady knows he wants to go somewhere, to make a constructive contribution to life, but he’s so busy rushing that he doesn’t take the time to evaluate his progress.

There’s a cure for that malady which I find exceptionally effective. The answer is found in these words from the French mathematician and philosopher of the 17th century, Blaise Pascal: “All men’s [and women’s] miseries come from their inability to sit quietly and alone.”