My wife and I just finished watching the new Netflix series, Modern Love. It’s eight episodes long with each episode being based off an various essays that was published in the New York Times. Each episode portrays a different element or a unique experience, but all focus on the universality of Love. Outside of one, maybe two episodes, we truly enjoyed the series and the discussions that they encouraged.
This week’s thought is inspired by a little line that is uttered at the end of the last episode. The writers are trying to tie all the stories together (since they all happen in New York City) and there’s a brief scene where two strangers (the future couple of episode 4) are talking outside a dinner where the man has just been stood up. He’s frustrated and hurt and shows little patience for the pretty woman trying to engage in conversation. Then, in an effort to cheer him up, she shares a lesson her mother (or grandmother, I can’t remember) often shared with her. “Whenever life is hard, whenever bad things happen, Right the Universe by doing something positive in return” (a paraphrase).
Since then, this concept has been heavy on my mind, and for many reasons - most of which I will spare, for sake of time, but all of which revolve around a single topic: family.
We all have many families. Church families, work families, family families, and adopted families (both literal and metaphorical). And for me, this week, my families have struggled. Some struggles have been larger than others, some deeper and more painful than others, but all of them have been real and personal and valid. All of them, in some way or another, have been life-changing.
Maybe you can relate to these kind of days? Where your sisters and brothers are hurt and wounded by the evil of others, where your parents are battling deadly illnesses and your sons and daughters are lost and struggling to be found? Maybe you too can relate to these kind of days? Where your loved ones are simply hurting and all you want to do is fix it, to relieve their pain, and to make life great and normal and beautiful again?
I know I can.
And I know I can also relate to the feelings these types of days can stir, feelings of anger and frustration, of loss and bewilderment, of revenge even. Be it against those who have harmed me, my family, or to the world at large. Because if I’m in pain, if those around me I love are struggling and losing the battle of “fairness,” why should others - especially evil people - get to smile and enjoy life?
But then it hits me. If I chose to live that way, if I choose to treat others with impatience and rudeness when I’m having a bad day, if I choose to be snippy and irritated when a coworker or random stranger is unkind or rude, if I choose to say mean and unkind things towards people whom I think are mean and unkind, I only exacerbate (my least favorite word, by the way) the cruelty and destruction that so easily frustrated or hurt me; I entangle myself in the mess, rather than escape it.
Instead, I should Right the Universe. When someone is cruel or rude, I should find someone else and show an extra bit of kindness. When someone says a cruel or divisive thing about me, instead of festering on the person or words, I should spend some time writing thank you cards to those who have encouraged me. And when life is hard, when things just don’t seem to be going my way, I should make an effort to make sure someone else’s day is killer.
I’ve been practicing this advice throughout the week, and it has led to a couple pretty fun and memorable experiences. Like the day one of my students tested out of his support math class (which he didn’t want to be in). Instead of simply telling him he passed, I had the counselor bring him down to my office. He thought he was in trouble and walked in a bit tentatively. But then the music started and the Athletic’s Director and myself started dancing. We had a 5 second dance party, gave him a few high-fives, then sent him back to class.
Afterward, I felt a lot better, and not because I focused on myself. I felt a lot better because he felt better, because he was smiling and laughing and having a good time, and because it felt as though the Universe was made Right.