Hospitals, green lizard skin couches, wheelchairs, and kindness.
“I'm going to park this right here, if that's OK with you?”
I am sitting on a blue couch with a green lizard print backing. It reminds me of the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with its vinyl covering feel and the smell of anticeptics (not that different from the movie’s famous windex). I'm in a waiting room at the hospital. One of 'my' people is having surgery today.
I'm hunkered into a little waiting room with a few books, a Yeti of Tulsi tea, a PBnJ, and some chocolate (of course). I am waiting for the surgeon to come in and update me. People coming and going up and down the corridors... An endless flow of humans, beds with special features, and empty food trays. Hospitals are busy places.
The medium build red-haired woman with yellow crocs is smiling at me. One of her crocs has a few of those croc do-dads on it - one is a heart, which makes me smile. She's leaving a wheelchair, labelled 'patient transportation', in the waiting room. She has carefully tucked it behind the entrance door to the room.
"I’ll keep an eye on it - I promise" I say.
"Thank you", she says. "This is a good one and my husband likes it."
Hospitals. An important place of support and healing. I know I'm grateful that my person has someone taking care of business right now. Intensity, stress, joy, and fear - all of it happening at the same time.
As I sit here watching the smash-up of life, sickness & healing & sweetness & struggle, and being in my own experience of hope-turmoil-fear-and-meditation, I am acutely aware that the one thing I can bring to the table in the lives of these strangers who are also going through their own hospital experience is compassion. I can't do much, but I can be kind.
A smile. A hello. A wave to a little one holding mom’s hand. A thumbs up (because these are still cool even if it’s not 1983). An “i'll keep an eye on your patient conveyance”.
Years of yoga practice, study, and exploration, and it comes down to one thing. Kindness.
The yellow croc-wearing red-head pops back into the room and says "I'm back for the chair."
I respond with a smile "It was very well-behaved... You should give it a treat!"
She laughs and I can hear her telling her husband the whole story... "She says we should give the chair a treat it was so well-behaved"...
Be kind. It's not that hard to do, and it goes such a long way to reminding all of us that humanity is still alive.
Feel free to leave additional questions and comments below. I am happy to add to this conversation.