Today I Began: A Small Gift Could Ripple Big

Two days ago, I witnessed the magic of random kindness when I was having dinner with a friend who's involved with ServiceSpace. We gave a bracelet to the waitress with a message on it: "I am a sacred, worthy, luminous being. I am love and my love is for giving." The bracelet was a gift from Dr. Tom Pinkson, who shared his wisdom at the first Sacred Leadership Summit we'd just attended. To our surprise, the waitress was very happy and told us how sad she was the previous night and she prayed. The bracelet made her day! At the end of our dinner, she insisted offering us free coconut ice-cream. We were just thinking about getting coconut ice-cream after dinner! Wow, a small gift could ripple big. You just never know. In this case, it was sweet synchronicity. 

Last night, I watched the interview of Nipun Mehta by Charles Eisenstein who authored Sacred Economics. For the first time, I realized that I'd missed the point about giving. Not only I didn't see the big effect of giving, but I tended to associate most giving with some degree of condescending gesture. After hearing Nipun's simple yet profound description about giving, it dawned on me: We give outside, while receiving inside. It doesn't matter how small the effect would be outside. For example, the homeless to whom we feed one meal might be starved to death a week later. What matters is the interconnectedness and stillness we experience inside when we give. When the person who receives is inspired to pay it forward, he or she will experience that inner transformation as well. That's what it is about. "All life is practice."  

This morning, I felt very uplifted to practice generosity. I brought several Smile cards and a gift card with me as I rode my bike to my next thing. On the way, I greeted strangers with "good morning" and a smile; they all mirrored me. I saw a weary old man, who seemed a borderline homeless, lying on the bench in a bus waiting booth; I stopped. I wanted to put a Smile card and the gift card next to him. Trying not to wake him up, I reached my hand from the bottom of the booth to put the cards on the bench next to his head, but my arm was not long enough and I still woke him up. Embarrassingly, I offered him the cards with two hands, but he looked away and said, "No, thanks." I apologized and then left.

Giving is a life practice. Look deeply and then act deeply, as Thich Nhat Hanh would put it. It was my first conscious attempt and I wouldn't say I failed, because in my heart I knew, next time if I pay more attention, I'll know better what another person might need and then give that to him or her in a more skillful way. :)

"We've all been given a gift, a gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back."  -- Edo

"It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving." -- Mother Teresa


More about the writer: http://www.xiaojuanshu.net

A Spontaneous Journey Home

A couple of months ago, I went back to China to see my mother who underwent a small surgery on her stomach. Before Mother's hospitalization, Shaoli, my best friend in high school, also a doctor in that hospital, messaged me "not to worry" and that she would be there for my mother. True. My sleepless nights on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean could contribute little goodness. And I definitely wasn't planning to fly over half of the globe to visit Mother; the following two weeks on my Google Calendar had already been filled up with my normal busy-ness. On the following day of her surgery, Mother shared over the phone that she held Shaoli's hand tightly in hers during the procedure.

I sensed that the hand Mother wanted to hold was mine, but the Pacific is wide. Suddenly, an urge to be by Mother's side stirred inside of me. For a moment, I felt torn between Mother and Google calendar. 

My flight to China was supposed to transfer in Taipei to Shanghai, but due to bad weather, it landed in Osaka in Japan, where we were stranded for 10 hours. During the long hours at the airport, I received from a ServiceSpace friend the recording of my sharing at the Wednesday Awakin Circle the night before my China trip. What a sweet surprise. I again chewed on all the heartwarming wishes that I received from many in the circle that evening. This trip felt right.

Mother's Story
As the eldest daughter in her family, Mother was asked to quit school to help the family when she was in the second grade at age 11. She started school late, but she loved it. One day her teacher lost her voice and asked Mother to help teach the class. Standing in front of the class, Mother knew what she wanted to do when she grew up—a teacher like her father. When my grandfather asked her not to go to school the next day, she begged in vain. She stayed in bed the next day, then the next, and the next. She heard her teacher talking to her parents in another room, but her father would not compromise. Her pillow was wet with her tears. On the fourth day, she got up, swept the floor, fed the pigs, and then carried two water barrels to the river. She never went back to school again.

When I was little, Mother said, “The only thing in the whole world you need to worry about is studying. I will do anything to support you going to school, even if I had to climb the mountain that’s sharp as a knife, or jump into the sea that’s full of fire!” She worked in the polluted fertilizer factory, while taking care of the crops in our small family field. During droughts, many nights she waited by the field for water to come through the irrigation pipe. I saw her cry. When I was in the sixth grade, my father lost his job and later became sick. Mother has become the single breadwinner in our family ever since. She farmed, scavenged, worked in polluted factories and later on scaffolding in construction, sold vegetables and eggs on the street, and even sold her own blood. Her hands were covered with calluses and cuts.

I appreciated Mother’s support of me going to school, but I never wanted her to come to my school in town because I didn’t want my classmates to see her, a peasant with a weather-stricken face. Even during one of my visits from college, when Mother grabbed my hand in a crowded local store, I instantly pulled my hand away. Standing next to her in public made me feel ashamed, not to say, holding hands. As I grew older, my shame of Mother began to diminish slowly. Now, she is one Pacific Ocean away; the long distance has brought us close.

As a lifelong servant, Mother not only supported her two children, my brother and me, going to college, but also served her parents, her younger siblings, her husband, and now, her grandson.

Arriving Home
48 hours after my departure from the Bay Area, I arrived at my childhood home. It was already the 6th day after Mother's surgery. I didn't tell her that I was coming home. As I was walking toward the open yard where my old home used to stand, I saw Mother checking on the vegetables in the yard. "Ma!" I called. She looked up and, for a moment, stood there looking at me as if I were someone from Mars before she ran to give me a joyful hug. Her energy was still low, but her heart survived another surprise visit of mine.  

My father was in the kitchen and smiled with the half of his face that was not paralyzed. Besides paralyzed facial expression, he has suffered from the Parkinson’s Disease for over 15 years, but he manages to take care of himself most of the time. In the past, he cooked while Mother hustled on the streets selling vegetables for their kids' tuition. It was lunch time. I devoured the rice and the eggplants and tofu dish, and drank up the soup in front of me. My parents sat there watching me, almost forgetting to eat their own meals. Mother was still on liquid diet.

One noticeable addition was big red trash bins placed at intervals along the road. No wonder I saw little trash on the riverbank or in the river this time. Many factories lined in the near distance, and one of the factory names was related to wind energy. My old home was located in the rural area bordering the edge of the town; now the farmland is the breeding ground for new factories. 

The Unexpected Flood

It rained all day the next day and night. Mother was glad that we could just chill at home and talk. In the evening, watching TV in a tiny room with my parents was our quality family time. The TV episodes were usually about the anti-Japanese war in the 1930s and 1940s, not so much on the battles between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party as some years back. Sometimes we watched the Chinese version of Britain’s Got Talent. 

                                     

When the rain stopped the following day, the road in front of the house was submerged by rainwater and became part of the river. In the morning, I ventured out with my point-and-shoot camera. I stepped into the almost knee-deep water and trudged to the higher main road, which mostly stayed out of water. People gathered here and there talking about this unusual flood and comparing it to the last flood in 1991. A couple of men were fishing in the overflowing river. Many electric scooters parked outside were half under the water. To their owners’ dismay, some of the engines refused to start. 

I walked to the fertilizer factory, where I took the bus to school from the first to the ninth grade and where Mother had worked as a temporary worker for ten years. The factory prospered back then, brand new concrete road leading to the factory gate from a mile away outside, new apartments for the employees, and freshly painted red pavilion in the middle of a pond with clear water and orange fish. The factory was originally state-run before it was privatized. All the formal workers enjoyed much higher social status than us. I often wished my parents were official factory workers, not peasants. Now decades later, the concrete road was uneven and cracked, the apartments looked old and weary, the national flag waving above the factory gate was torn into two pieces, the red paint on the pavilion had faded long ago, and the water in the pond was murky and overflowing the edges. A dog with one wounded ear crippled around the factory yard, looking for food. In fact , the factory was bankrupt, I heard. Over the years, several explosions happened in the factory due to the obsolete equipment and inadequate safety control. Many workers died. The green-striped school bus I wished to see had retired some years back. I had many sweet memories about that bus, on which a group of us first and second graders took turns to share stories with one another. 

 A new painting on the factory wall: "Life is precious.
                      Development should not depend on the sacrifice of human lives,
          which should be regarded as an untrespassable red line."
-- Xi Jinping 

Due to the poor quality of water, I bought two bottled water in the dim convenient store on the fertilizer factory compound. The friendly woman who worked there asked me many questions, such as how old I was, what I did for a living, where I lived, and if I was married with any kid. I grabbed the chance to leave when another person came to talk to her. 

On my way back, more people were fishing.

Reconnecting to the Land

After the water retreated, earthworms were ended up on the dirt road and the concrete paths everywhere. Many of them were killed by cars, motorcycles, scooters, or hurried human feet. Watching them frenetically trying to go somewhere safe without being able to see the big picture, I felt propelled to help them relocate. But any snake-shaped moving thing makes my body tense. As I stood in the middle of moving earthworms, each pore in my body screamed with irrational fear. I picked up a small twig and began to transport earthworms to the vegetable field by the roadside. A truck honked behind me and I jumped aside. After the truck passed, more earthworms died silently under the truck wheels, and one leapt in the air and landed on the ground twisting its body. One earthworm was still trying to move with half of its body crushed to the ground. My heart twitched. I unstuck its crushed half and dropped it to the field. After a dozen of earthworms were relocated to safety, I looked at the road, discouraged; there were so many of them. Then the story came to me again: Hundreds of fish were stranded on the beach gasping for water. A boy began to threw back the fish to the ocean, one at a time. Someone passed by and said, “It doesn’t matter. There are so many of them dying.” The boy picked up one fish and said, “It matters to this one.” Then he picked up another one and said, “And this one!” I bent down again to relocate more earthworms to “safety zone.”  

As I am writing this, I searched online about what earthworms do exactly. On the website of Earthworm Society of Britain, it says that earthworms enjoy the title of “ecosystem engineers.” These humble creatures do incredible engineering and decomposition work for the Mother Earth, while needing so little to sustain themselves.

I walked westward on the dirt road in front of my old home with my camera again. Through the camera lens, everything in front of me was surprisingly beautiful, the flowers Mother grew, the river with reflections of trees and houses, the trees and houses themselves, the little dog, the mother cat breastfeeding her kitten, and the run-down narrow bridge. 

The narrow cement bridge that I'd walked on for numerous times as a child

As I stood on the bridge which I’d walked numerous times as a child, something shifted in me. In the past decade, I felt distanced from this land that had sustained my life. I felt frustrated, angered, and disgusted by the polluted river, the trash, and the funny smell in the air. I found the land repellent, even though the land didn’t do anything wrong—we did it. But that day when I stood on that run-down cement bridge looking at the shimmering surface of the river, I felt grateful for the first time, for everything that this land has offered. Though I still sink into the sorrow of not being able to stop the train whose brake seems to be out of order, I would never stop appreciating this land for her endurance, resilience, and sacrifices. 

I walked back home. My parents were cooking in the kitchen. Every day, Mother came up with a new dish that she wanted to make for me. She used to freeze all the special food that I’d missed, such as soy beans from spring, shrimps from summer, water chestnuts from fall, and the dumplings from the previous New Year’s dinner. She said if I ate them, it would be like I never left home. But I said that I preferred eating fresh, not aged frozen food. She stopped doing that. That day Mother made zongzi, reed leaves wrapped sticky rice with red beans.

I thought this trip was my heroic journey home to help my parents, but apparently, they were still more capable of taking care of me than I was taking care of them. I quietly observed them through the kitchen window. These two humble human beings brought me into this world and raised me from an infant, and supported me until I was able to explore this life on my own.I think of the poem by Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree. The tree is happy to give everything to the boy, her fruits, her branches, and her trunk. At the end, when she has only a stump left, she is happy to offer a seat to the boy who now has grown old and tired. As children of Mothers, when can we learn to give back? As children of the Earth, when shall we stop taking so much? 

Visiting Grandma

After their old residences were bulldozed and the land was handed over to the local government to build factories, the farmers were moved into boxed apartments. I visited my grandma who now lives in the farmers apartment complex close to my parents’ place. The elders wander around in the complex, meeting with some neighbors to gossip about other neighbors; the younger ones work in factories, near or afar. I spent the night with Grandma, who lives with my younger uncle who's never married. After Grandpa passed away two years ago, nights could be too quiet for her. She still keeps the old habit of watching Xinwen Lianbo, the CCTV (China Central Television) news at 7 pm every evening. That was Grandpa’s daily routine for many decades. In the living room, two relatively new posters were on the wall: one was President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang shaking hands, below which were the small portraits of all 7 members of the Politburo Standing Committee; the other was Xi and his wife Ms. Peng Liyuan. After breakfast, Grandma and I took a walk in the complex. She told every neighbor we met, “This is my granddaughter, my eldest daughter’s, just came back from America!”

The Posters of President Xi in Grandma's Living-room

What I Need to Learn From Mother

After the flood retreated, Mother drove her electric tricycle to town with me sitting in the back. She was much better than me navigating the traffic in China. We ran some errands before we went to see the new apartment that my parents will receive next year from the government. The apartment is still under construction, and Mother has been going there photographing its progress. I didn’t mention earlier that the house I grew up in were bulldozed. Mother built two simple huts on the land as temporary living space.  

Many strangers greeted her on the street, in a bank, or at a store. Was my Mother popular in town? Those were mostly her former customers. Mother had sold vegetables and eggs next to the same market for a decade. She often offered her customers small gifts such as green onions and garlic when they passed by, regardless if they wanted to buy anything from her or not that day. Mother has retired from selling vegetables since she assumed the task of taking care of her grandson. She misses interacting with people at the market.

Mother walked ahead of me, approaching the new apartment complex’s construction site. “Hey stop! Do not go in!” A man yelled. Mother said something and kept going, but I hesitated to follow. A few other men were lolling around and Mother interacted with them. Then the man who just yelled also joined in and they all laughed together about something. I walked closer to them. Mother pointed to one of the buildings and said she would be moving to the sixth floor next year. On the way home, she said that people were often rude to her in the beginning, but soon they would hold her arm and laugh with her. Mother has been yelled at by strangers all her life. She once said that she didn’t understand why people were rude to her without her doing anything wrong. “Is it because I am ugly?” She asked. Now Mother has somehow come out of that old shame and fear. That’s something I need to learn from her. I am afraid of hearing “no” and confronting anyone even when it is necessary. I alway hide behind the “being gentle and nice” mask to avoid conflict. I submit out of fear, or sometimes rebel out of fear. But when Mother decides to go to the local government to make a request about something, she not only faces “No” from the people in the office, but also from my relatives. Yet, she sticks to her mission. If Mother can be so, why can’t I? I am her daughter after all. Another thing to deeply ponder: fearless compassion.

Departure Again
When I told Mother my departure date, her lips pouted in disappointment, but only for a second. When I was resting in my room, she quietly went to the local store and came back to make new dishes for me to taste. In the morning, she got up very early to cook more breakfast than what I could eat for three meals. On my departure day, my father suggested he give me a ride to the bus station. Mother said she would. Later, my father wanted to come along, but there was no room on Mother's electric tricycle. As we were about to ride away, I heard “Hey!” from behind. My father was standing by the kitchen window waving his hand. I smiled and waved back, holding back my tears. My father does not express his feelings much, but whenever he does, he hits hard on my soft spot.

I asked myself: from this point on, am I willing to fully accept this life and be thankful for everything that's been offered? How can I contribute to the big pool? Am I capable of surrendering to my insignificant existence and loving more?

More about the writer: http://www.xiaojuanshu.net