In 1988, as a college student in San Francisco, I made the front page of the SF Chronicle newspaper and did an appearance on The Late Show for delivering a stranger’s baby on a sidewalk, while walking to my work. The paper’s called me the “Sidewalk Doctor.” It was a beautiful baby girl!
Well it turns out that when you land on the front page of a newspaper, all kinds of people write to you. Strangers just send their letters to the paper and the paper forwards them to you. Who knew?!
So I was getting lots of letters thanking me for stopping and helping the woman in her time of great need. Well, it was kind of obvious to me that you stop and help a pregnant woman so all the thanks I was receiving was nice but also undue. At the same time though it was definitely heart warming to receive letters from kind people who took time out of their day to express their appreciation.
They were all nice letters but one of them stood out. It was a beautiful black and white card with an image of a woman working in her garden. And inside the woman wrote in purple ink,
“Dear Beautiful Person, Thanks for helping the Universe. Peace & Love, Alice Walker.”
Alice Walker, highly awarded author, novelist, poet and activist, had recently been riding a new wave of recognition because her book The Color Purple had been made into a movie by Spielberg and Oprah just a few years before. And yet she had taken the time to write a stranger a card, just to say thanks for helping another person. I couldn’t believe it!
And what beautiful thing Alice Walker wrote to me. “Thanks for helping the Universe.” She seemed to be saying that every good deed helps more than we know. Every good deed ripples farther than we think. At least that’s what I took it to mean.
I cherish that Alice Walker wrote me a handwritten card because she taught me that no matter who you are, how notable you become, or how busy you get, you have time to give thanks, even to a stranger. That giving thanks is a way to acknowledge the love in the world, a way encourage more of it, and a way to counter the darkness.
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