Living Tenderly in a Troubled World
I’ve been thinking lately about how the world is held together in ways we may not readily notice, especially when headlines are shouting that the sky is falling. Often, it’s the small, faithful connections that steady me—a simple reaching out, a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
Last week, I called a dear friend to wish him a happy birthday. He’s a couple of years older than me and lives almost 2,300 miles away in New Orleans. Our friendship goes all the way back to high school. He taught me to drive and took me to my first fraternity party. We were each other’s confidants. We hung out at the student union, shared long conversations about life before either of us really knew what life would ask of us. I remember watching the funeral of President Kennedy with him in his family room—a moment etched in my memory.
He loved to cook then, and he still does now. I was a witness to his shotgun wedding. I had my own quick wedding a couple of years later and moved back to California. We stayed in touch for a while, visiting when vacations carried me back to Louisiana to see family. And then, as happens so easily, we lost touch. He divorced. So did I. Phone numbers changed. Life moved on.
But some people are simply too precious to lose. Years later I tracked down his contact information through a mutual friend, and we found our way back into each other’s lives. Now I call him every year on his birthday. I love hearing his Southern drawl and that deep, familiar laugh. He still loves to cook. He has a sweet relationship that brings him joy.
It feels like a small miracle—this thread of friendship still intact after all these years and all these turns of the road. It is one shining strand in a small constellation of friendships that continue to bless my life.
Every once in a while I wonder, in that very human way, what life might have looked like if different choices had been made. Not in regret, but in curiosity. Our lives—and the world we inhabit—are shaped by countless decisions, small and large, conscious and unconscious.
I was reminded of this recently while reading Mitch Albom’s novel Twice, about a man given the magical ability to relive moments in his life for a second chance. It raises all kinds of interesting questions about choices, their consequences, and whether we would truly change anything if we could.
Unlike the fantasy in Albom’s tale, in this reality, once a path is taken, we can’t go back and walk another one. We live forward, carrying both the beauty and the cost of what has been chosen. What we can do is learn. We can gather the wisdom our lives have offered us, make peace with what cannot be changed, and choose how we move forward.
For me, that means holding the life I’ve been given with tenderness—the children it brought me, the friendships that continue to bless me, the hard-earned peace that came through experience rather than theory. No regrets. Just lessons. And a deep gratitude for the life that has unfolded in its own imperfect, perfect way.
Maybe another version of me is living another beautiful story somewhere in the great mystery of things. I’ll leave that to the philosophers and physicists. It’s fun to wonder—right up until my brain starts to ache. What I know for certain is that I love the richness of the life I’m living now. I love that I can still pick up the phone and wish my old friend a happy birthday one more time. I love that he’s still here—still kicking, still cooking, still laughing.
These were the thoughts keeping me company one morning this past week as I sipped my coffee and waited for the winter fog to lift so I could walk my sweet dog. Later that day I baked sourdough and cookies to deliver to another friend whose birthday happened to be the same week. I did a little writing, a little crocheting, listened to a book, and played cards with girlfriends later that evening.
It was an ordinary day—and a blessed one—one that retirement has made possible.
That same morning, as I was making breakfast, Michael Jackson’s song “Save the World” came on. I found myself unexpectedly in tears. The song landed right on top of the tender place already opened by memory and gratitude. How do we save a troubled world? How do we reconcile the sweetness of a morning like this with the harshness that surrounds us?
It’s impossible to drive far from my neighborhood without seeing tents and cardboard shelters—lives lived on the edge of survival. It’s impossible to avoid the headlines filled with anger, fear, and images of people being pulled from their homes and workplaces—people being shot and killed.
I’m struck by how profoundly separate my world is from the lives of people whose very safety—even their survival—is at stake for standing up to what they believe is wrong. I wake to coffee and bread and phone calls, while others step into days that require courage simply to exist.
It’s tempting to feel helpless in the face of that much suffering. I don’t pretend to have answers. But again and again, I find myself grateful for the small, human responses that are making a difference.
I recently found a story about a father in a quiet suburb of Pittsburgh who decided, with his two young sons, to do something small and concrete when they learned that some families might lose their SNAP benefits. They didn’t start a nonprofit or launch a campaign. They pulled a tote and a couple of old coolers out of the garage, strung up some Christmas lights, scribbled a sign with a Sharpie, and set up a free food pantry in their front yard.
His youngest son worried aloud, “Dad, what if nobody comes?” And his father answered in a way that feels so good for our times: “Buddy, if we help one person, then this was all worth it.”
Of course, more than one person came. Neighbors began dropping off food. Strangers joined in. An anonymous envelope of cash appeared in the mailbox with a blessing scribbled inside. The little front-yard pantry became a gathering point for generosity and dignity—a quiet reminder that feeding people can be as simple as inviting them to your table and saying, “Come grab what you need. I’m happy to have you.”
And maybe that’s how the world is quietly held together—not by grand gestures or perfect solutions, but by ordinary people tending the small corners they’ve been given. By bread in the oven. By phone calls across the miles. By a walk with a dog, a deck of cards on a table, a listening ear, a warm loaf of sourdough and chocolate chip cookies given to a friend to celebrate his birthday.
Small things. Human things. They cannot fix the whole world. But maybe, together, they keep the wells from running dry.