On human kindness, community, and shoveling snow

Are YOU tuning in to the inauguration? I’ve been asking friends this question and some say yes definitely while others say absolutely not are you kidding me? The world is becoming scarier and I think I’m not the only one who’s been turning inward, closer to home, and trying to look at what’s happening on my street, in my neighborhood, at my church.

There is an 82 year old woman, Tara, in my small group at church. We appreciate each other partly because of the big age gap – me at 31 and her at 82. She emailed our small group to say she couldn’t go to the Christmas service because she had pneumonia, and could someone please pick up extra service bulletins, because the service was in honor of her husband, Frank? Frank passed away in June and it was the first Christmas without him.

I replied to her email that I was in Wisconsin and wouldn’t be going to the service at our church and so I couldn’t bring her extra bulletins, but I was sorry to hear she had pneumonia and couldn’t make it out for Christmas. She wrote back that it had been a tough Christmas this year – the first without Frank – but she still had a nice day celebrating with her daughter.

Yesterday at church, another friend came up to me just to tell me that he’d gotten coffee with Tara last week, and she’d shared how much that simple email exchange with me meant to her. “She talked about it for over half the time we were having coffee!” he remarked.

I was touched and surprised to hear this. From my perspective it had been only a few simple emails. But you never know what will leave a mark.

Last night we had our first snowstorm in Boston. Raja and I stayed in and watched the snow swirling around the street lamps and listened to the plow thundering past. This morning we woke up to a fresh blanket of snow sparkling under a clear sky with sun pouring down everywhere.

I’m off work today and Raja’s working from home. We said we’d go out to shovel in just a little bit, after I had my coffee. Raja has never shoveled snow before; this blows my mind, but that’s what growing up in Jordan will do for you, I suppose.

I sipped my coffee and read a new book I’m obsessed with: The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. I’ve been gulping it down in huge gulps since Raja ordered it for me last week.

This book and I have only been acquainted for 3 days and 100 pages, but I’ve already examined several of my scariest inner demons and gone straight into what Martha calls “Do Not Mention Zones” to figure out what scares me the most and then to try to de-claw those fears. I think Martha is a genius to be able to deliver this type of service to the average reader in just 100 pages, and she does it with endless gentleness and humor.

Anyway, so here I am sipping my (very strong) coffee and examining the fierce claws of my inner demons, as one does when one has a day off of work and the world outside is blanketed in freshly fallen snow.

I heard the scrape of a shovel.

Then another.

I looked out the living room window to see if our upstairs neighbor was shoveling, but instead I saw our landlord, Steve. Steve! What a kind man. Have you ever heard of a Boston landlord who voluntarily shovels his tenants’ driveways when it’s not even his responsibility, per the lease?

I think we won the landlord lottery. This man is so kind, and because we are renting out his childhood home, he cares deeply about the house and takes good care of it. But shoveling! That seemed a bit extra.

I changed out of my striped purple pajama pants into a more normal outfit, laced up my snow boots, and went to the front door.

Hi Steve! Good morning. You don’t need to do that, you know.

Oh, I just figured, I was passing by. I have the day off work. Might as well. Get my calories in and all that.

Well, that’s very kind of you. We were planning to come out in a bit and shovel, so really no need.

Oh, that’s alright. Like I said, I did my own and then was just passing by here.

Alright, well, thank you – nice to see you.

We exchanged some pleasantries about how we both love this neighborhood, and how you can walk from this house to Spy Pond if you go one way and Mystic River if you go the other way.

He shook his head laughing at how many times he has shoveled this very front walk – first while growing up in this house, and later, while taking care of his dad who grew old here. Then I stepped back inside to finish my coffee, dive back into Martha Beck, and tell Raja that we seem to have won the landlord lottery.

Emailing someone who has pneumonia over Christmas. Shoveling someone’s driveway. You never know what will lift someone up and restore their faith in humanity’s goodness. On the day that an unhinged 78-year-old takes for the second time the oath of office for President of the United States, this is just what I needed.

Maybe Steve is shoveling driveways to take his own mind off the inauguration – I don’t know his politics. Maybe he’s out there trying to focus on the tiny sphere of influence each of us has, by doing small kindnesses for other people.

In the past year I’ve been lucky enough to find true community in Boston, the likes of which I haven’t had since living in the same neighborhood of Amman as most of my expat friends eight years ago. I feel really lucky to have a strongly interwoven net of wonderful people I can fall back on, call, rely on, ask for favors, do favors for, meet for coffees, go running with, and just generally do life with. Some of these people live within a 5-minute walk of my house.

A 5-minute walk! This also seems unheard of when it’s 2025 and you’re in your 30s. The internet abounds with articles on why it’s hard to make friends as an adult, and we hear over and over again about the loneliness epidemic in America. Like most other people I spent most of the last years – the COVID years – without such an immediate sense of community, and now that I have it, I realize how much I’ve been missing it.

It makes the city where I live feel more fun, more open, more warm, and more inviting. Yes I know, that is not how Boston, MA is usually described. But we’ve just made plans to go to a cocktail bar I love and dancing at the Havana Club and skiing in Vermont. What a beautiful and lucky thing, to have a community.

This is my buffer in the face of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth and the Panama Canal and the Greenland ridiculousness and Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Bannon.

I recognize that I have enough privilege that my daily life (for now, it seems) will not be immediately and drastically impacted by the arrival of these uber-wealthy, old, white, cantankerous man-children back on the scene. (This is not the case for millions of people in this country, and I feel legitimately worried about the impending impacts of this shitshow on immigrants, the LGBTQ community, those fighting for justice in Palestine, and so many other groups.)

I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and ignore everything for the next four years. But I’m also going to avoid “living inside the news”, which is how Oliver Burkeman wisely describes the phenomenon of “marinating 24/7 in news-panic”.

Today I’ll tune into the inauguration coverage because I actually do want to witness this historically scary moment. Then, I’ll do some writing, cook pad thai, and rest.

By rest I mean I plan to sit on my couch with no phone or laptop or book within arm’s reach, and stare vacantly into the middle distance. I don’t think I do enough of this – true rest, zero tasking – and it’s what days off should be for.

What are you embracing outside the news this week?