No Small Love

“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”

-Anne Sexton

Imagine: You’re in a quiet room full of people – maybe a work meeting, maybe a church service – and only one person is talking.  The leader of the meeting is discussing a very serious topic, one that seems wildly inappropriate to interrupt in any way.  Suddenly, you feel the urge to sneeze – and sneeze BIG, like you’re trying to emit a ten year’s worth of dust from your body.  You try so hard to suppress it, and you eventually realize that the best you’ll be able to do is one of those half-sneezes – you know, the kind that you sort-of release into your nose.  (I never thought I’d ever discuss the execution of sneezing in such detail…)

So you finally let it go – and as expected, even the quiet half-sneeze disrupts the flow of the meeting.  Several people glance up at you for a moment, and then come back to the ever-important discussion at hand.  Some even dare to say “bless you” – bold souls they are.  But no matter how quietly you tried to relieve your discomfort, it still made a wave and rocked the boat – though in a decidedly neutral way.

What I love about Anne Sexton’s sentiment above, is that it so beautifully illustrates what we all forget in the modern world.  We underestimate how much others notice those small acts of love.  It’s easy to understand how this would happen, given how inundated we are with stories of tragedy every day.  Watching the news can make us pretty cynical about the world.  The sheer volume of coverage on wars, street crimes, and mass shootings can make us wonder if kind acts actually have any lasting positive effects on humanity.  We question whether it’s worthwhile to even try, since our efforts to make the world a better place seem to be overwhelmed by massive acts of destruction and hatred anyways.

But then life reminds us how much people need our love, no matter how small of doses we are able to offer.  The guy you meet at the party where he knows nobody feels relieved when you take the time to talk to him and make him feel welcome.  The delivery man struggling against the Florida heat to carry a stack of bulky packages is grateful when you hold the door open for him, even though it delays your plans for a few minutes.  Your friend who just became a first-time mother is thankful when you offer to watch her baby for 30 minutes while she takes a long-overdue shower.  And whether she lives a few states away or a few streets away, your mom will never tire of you calling her to just to say hi and see how she’s doing.

These small acts of love may never have the power to rid our world of war and violence, but like a suppressed sneeze, they never go unnoticed.  In fact, they add up over time, and, unbeknownst to us, they may completely turn someone’s day around and give him/her the capacity to spread love to others.  In this way, these small acts of love can have ripple effects that reverberate far beyond their initial form.

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