S2: Episode 39 - Kindness

Hunger & Resilience – Episode 39 – Kindness

[Intro Music]

Narrator:  Welcome to Hunger and Resilience, narrative histories about the complexity and experiences of hunger. A traveling exhibition and weekly podcast edited and hosted by Michael Nye, supported by the San Antonio Food Bank, Eric Cooper, executive director. We are grateful for the honesty and eloquence of every voice. Episode 39, Kindness.

Narrator:Kindness. Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth, what you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness, how you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop. The passengers eating maze will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel. Where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you. He too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth, then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread. Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for and then goes with you everywhere, like a shadow or a friend.

[Outro Music]