The Giving Project

Making a care package for someone far away is one of my favorite-but-least-practiced things to do.  If you have a little extra time and budget (and of course, someone you like who doesn’t live next door), follow the leader:

1.  Find a good, sturdy box. 

2.  Set aside fun paper (for stuffing or for tidier [taped] decorating).

3.  Collect a bunch of little trinkets the lucky guy or girl will appreciate.  (Anything from a few magazines to some marbles, a pair of socks, packs of gum, a vintage tee, lotto tickets, a deck of cards, plastic army men, a matchbox car, lip balm, or bright postcards.) 

4.  Add in a few favorite things.  (Something special you know he or she will love.)

5.  And top it off with something edible.  (And of course, stable for shipping.)

6.  Include a hand-written note.

7.  Write out the address and make your sealed package look fun (but not theft-worthy).  (Consider: colorful tape, a hand-made label, multi-colored markers to write the name.)

You’re creative.  Now, GO. 

And a two year old just held the door (okay, a gate — what two year old can hold a whole door open??) for a high school kid he didn’t know. Another young helping the old story. (I guess.)

Today I realized that I can’t live without a few things.  Maybe just two things.

And I don’t mean things I love (this guy) or anything under the Obvious column (food, water, shelter).  The following two items are things without which I just don’t function well.

1.  Sunlight.  (That big cheery star has been elusive these past few days, and my mood has gone in and out with it — depressed… happy… angy… cheerful… doomed… hopeful.  Unfortunately, the sun set in privacy behind its cloud curtain this evening.  Which you know is the worst way to end the day — darkness isn’t so bad, but grey to black is pretty disheartening.  So for now, I’m doing what I can with Vitamin D.)

2.  Lists.  (My life just doesn’t go anywhere if I don’t make them — I would seriously sit here and read the internet all day long if I didn’t have a list directing me from bed to workout to shower to EAT [not kidding] to work item #1, #2, #3 and on and on.  Even things I want to do have to make it to the list, which still seems a little nutty to me, that I could be so paralyzed without notes — but I’m trying to embrace it.)

Anyway, I think it would be awfully nice of you to ask yourself what you need.  Even nicer to see about giving it.

Ever since it was no longer mandatory to say it at the dinner table, I’ve loved the word grace.  Maybe it was discovering Grace Kelly that did it for me — I wanted to be just like her.  But ignoring that, I think there’s really something to be said for reviving this particular trait.

Grace goes hand in hand with gratitude and an overall sense of calm.  It flows through the details of a life like air current.  Its friends are non-judgment and compassion and empathy.  Its emblem is its good manners.  And like anything else worthwhile, it is a skill that can be learned, and is difficult to fake.

The Sartorialist confirms:

Manners and grace are soooo important to great style. Would Cary Grant be Cary Grant without his grace? I’m telling you guys, women really notice that stuff.

Incidentally, I was also big on Cary Grant back when I first learned to appreciate grace.

Speaking as someone who’s made eight homes in two states, three cities and two boroughs in the last ten years, I tell you, there’s nothing better than living in a neighborhood.

“But isn’t every place you can live in a neighborhood?”

Nope.  I’m talking about the kind of place where people care about the welfare of the people they share their streets with.  About the kind of place where you don’t have to be strictly on guard at all hours of the day.  Where the people you pass on the sidewalk might actually smile at you!  In New York!  The kind of place where people are looking out for each other.

This morning I watched the King of Cliches play out around the corner.  From halfway down the block, I could see an older woman inching her way to the crosswalk — the excruciating tortoise.  And then out of nowhere a group of kids start to whirl by like a dust cloud on its way to school.  Naturally, my stomach muscles clench up a little; I’m looking out for trouble.

But one of the kids stops to help the woman across the street.  Not to push her or point and laugh or steal her bag.  JUST TO HELP.  And by the time I reached the corner, the two of them had reached the other side of the street and the woman was happily scooting the kid off to his friends.

I know I’m a total sucker for this shit, but I nearly teared up.  The old and the young coexisting, and a happy example of a kid raised right: THIS is a neighborhood.

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Every place you live may not come as a ready-made, pre-packaged version, but I’m convinced that one small action can change a place for the better.

Bring your neighbor’s newspaper inside.  Accept a package for someone who’s not home.  Instead of rolling your eyes over the noise, look out the window when you hear a car alarm.  Smile at someone you pass today.

Overall, just fight the urge to do nothing.  On the contrary: GET INVOLVED.  Even if it means overcoming the fear that “something bad will happen”.  What’s the point of living so close to so many other people if we’re not going to be a community?