Yesterday I saw something amazing.

While on my walk, I passed by three young boys raking leaves into four-foot-high piles and then--after tossing aside the rakes--they'd leap, laughing, into the leaf stacks.

They tossed leaves high and buried each other. They rolled around, giggling. They took turns running then--taking spread-eagle belly-flops--made big poofs of leaves rise in the autumn air.

Totally made my day to see something so old-fashioned as that.

Every year I hear people say things like this:

"Kids don't play in leaf piles anymore."
"You never see kids outside these days."
"Nobody reads books anymore."
"People never take time to visit their neighbors."
"These days, people are too stressed-out to be friendly."
"All modern tv shows and movies are just junk."
"The days of soda fountains inside stores are gone."
"The good old days, period, are just long gone."

Oh really? I don't find any of the above to be true.

And then I hear those same people tell me, "Well, I can only call it as I see it."

And to them I would say (fervently), open your eyes wider! You'll see more. Begin looking farther, wider, expecting to find what's right, not what's wrong. 

Our expectations color what our eyes behold.

Once I heard this story: A woman sat at her friend's table drinking coffee one morning. Her friend bitterly pointed out her window to the yard next door and said, "My neighbor is such a slob. See? Even her laundry on her clothesline is dirty."

The visiting friend got up to look closer and realized something. Her friend's window was dirty, not her neighbor's laundry! Everything outside appeared dusty and dull from this side of such a dirty window.

What a good lesson.

I'll be going with Tom today for one of his injections for his back. I'll need to drive him home because of the pain killer he'll be taking. I wonder what kinds of good old-fashioned things I'll see at the medical center? Probably people will hold doors open for others and folks will walk slowly beside their loved ones using canes.

There'll be more, even, for we'll all see examples of old-fashioned kindness everywhere when we go expecting to find them.

No, really.


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