I got a letter from a friend. She is, like me, a writer. She is a good writer and she was kind enough to send me some of the things she has written. This column is about two things that happened to me this afternoon; my friend’s letter in the mail and what I saw coming home from my mailbox.
My mailbox is on the corner of East Road and Bachelor Valley Road. That is where the row of several mailboxes are placed for the people in Bachelor Valley. The post office is 3 miles away in Upper Lake, so having the boxes is convenient.
On my way home, down East Road, I noticed, in a field on the right-side road, two large animals; a horse and a cow. The horse was standing and the cow was lying down. They weren’t doing anything. Both creatures were just enjoying the break in the rains and the afternoon sunshine.
What was peculiar and caught my attention was that the two animals were close to each other. The tableau couldn’t be misunderstood. They were friends. You might not think a cow and a horse can be friends. That’s where you would be dead wrong.
All kinds of different species strike up friendships with other species. I saw a goat on television that was famous for always leading a blind horse to water and feed every day. Mother pigs and her brood of baby piglets accepted a motherless puppy into the family to nurse like it was just another piglet.
Cleo lets me know when she needs me. She lets me know plain enough so that there is no mistaking in what she wants. She wants to be petted. She does that by lying on my computer next to the keyboard while I am working. Then she looks at me and sends me a telepathic message. If I am too dense to read her mind, she jumps to the bed and waits until I get the message she wants to be petted.
These tales merely make clear how much we all need someone. That’s just as true for people as it is for animals.
Now back to my friend’s letter. One of the items she enclosed in her letter was a story about an experience she had. It was about the genuine unselfish kindness of strangers. Once when she wanted a pair of earrings but could not come up with the $24 they cost, a stranger seeing her distress, with no other motive than kindness for the disappointed woman, paid for them.
Another time, inspired by Operation Tango Mike’s organization on the Internet, my thoughtful friend wanted to send Christmas cards to American servicemen who would otherwise be forgotten. When others learned of her money problem, people at Wal-Mart gave her cards and a print shop printed her letters.
We not only need each other, we respond to kindness for others with kindness of our own.
You and I, when we can, want to help one another. That trait brings out the best in us … and the best in others. When all is said and done, all we can leave behind is what we do for others. The rest is dust in the wind.
This writer is a realist and a practical person. There is nothing sugary or sappy about this solid premise about human nature. This truth is a part of our humanity; the better angel of our human nature. All that needs to be done is to gently awaken that good spirit.
That is the way we are and that is why I always vote for the human race.
Gene Paleno is an author and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
