Can we take steps to normalize generosity and love?

​I was standing in line for lunch at a conference yesterday with my friend and work colleague Marrin. Marrin follows a gluten-free diet and has food allergies, so she was asking the servers questions about the ingredients in some of the food options.

I didn't notice a woman standing in line with us who was clearly paying attention to her conversations, but a beautiful thing was about to happen because she was.

When Marrin and I sat down with our lunches, a woman approached our table and said, "I don't want to come across as creepy, but I have some gluten-free pasta and chicken I brought for my lunch, and I'm more than happy to share it with you."

She would go on to be almost apologetic that the pasta isn't as firm as some other pastas, but if my friend was willing to overlook that, she was more than welcome to have it.

I was caught off guard by this, and not in a creepy way.

Here we were, speaking at a conference that challenges us to enter into the struggles of others, to better understand them in our desire to bring healing to them, and there standing before us was a woman carrying this challenge out as if it wasn't a challenge at all.

As if that's just the way she does life.

I heard someone say yesterday that we are always being asked the question, 'will you open your heart'?

Reflecting on that, and our lunchtime experience with this beautiful human, I found myself wondering: if we don't hear that question is it because we struggle with hearing, or do we struggle with listening closely enough to the people around us to fully hear that question being asked of us?

This woman was paying attention to what was going on in the lives of the people around her. And whether she'd articulate it this way or not, what she was hearing was, "will you open your heart?"

It's telling that in answering, yes, I will open my heart, she felt obligated to acknowledge that opening her heart might come across as creepy.

Why is that?

Why is it that another human being responding in generosity and love would have to overcome her beliefs that her generosity might come across as creepy on her way to our table with her gluten-free pasta and chicken?

Have purposeful acts of kindness become so rare that we have to battle the awkwardness of taking on that rare in order to be kind?

Maybe this online world doesn't help much with that.

In this online world we are often so after each other's throats over speeches and politics and religion and world views that we can forget in the real life world out there, there are people who are answering the question, "will you open your heart" with a resounding hell yes.

In this online world where people are often debating who has the most closed hearts out there, it's easy to forget there's a woman standing in a lunch line waiting to open hers to everyone.

I know I left that lunch a little more challenged to opening my ears a little wider. A little wider in an attempt to hear that question, will you open your heart?

And to answer yes, as many times as I can, until slowly but surely no one ever again has to feel creepy about answering that question with their own yes.

Maybe listen to the world a little closer today. If you listen close enough, not a day will go by without you being asked, will you open your heart?

Let's all answer yes just a little more. Let's share the stories of those opening their hearts just a little more.

And maybe one day offering our gluten-free pasta to someone in need will feel like the most normal thing in the world to do. Because the truth is, that is supposed to be the most normal thing about us.