How Do You Keep Your Heart From Going Cold?

Socially and politically, our world has been a lot, and if we are honest in this moment, there are days when you do not know what will happen next. Even on the days that feel calm, the residue from the harder ones still makes the world feel like too much.

You open your phone and the headlines stack on top of each other: funding gaps, layoffs, new bills that target vulnerable communities, loss of life, and everything in between. You can feel the suffering close to home and far away. You can feel the weight of injustice, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, your heart can begin to go cold, and in many cases, numb to it all. Not because you do not care, but because you do, and caring this much for this long can overwhelm you and wear you down.

And with everything that has happened, the question I keep coming back to is this: how do you keep your heart from going cold in a world that feels this overwhelming? And the follow up question is just as honest: how do we still see the good in a world where everything seems set against peace?

And yet, even with those questions in front of me, sometimes the smallest encounters have the power to remind us of the good that is waiting to overtake us, and to give us the courage to keep showing up.

This week, I had one of those encounters. I was reminded that what we are looking for is often standing closer than we think. It came to me through a brother named Charles.

I was riding in the car with a friend. We were headed out to do some community work, and when we pulled up to a stoplight, there on the corner was a brother named Charles, holding a cup and asking for help with his medication and something to eat.

Normally I keep a little change on me for moments like this, and care packages too, but because I was not in my own vehicle, I had neither to give.

So the only thing I could do, as I try to do with every person I meet, was offer the power of acknowledgement.

I asked his name and how his day was going, because acknowledgement is still one of the most untapped resources we have. It reminds people that they are seen, especially when everything around them might make them feel invisible.

When I asked Charles his name, his smile and laughter was contagious.

In the short time the light held us there, he managed to bring joy to everyone in the car. Then it happened. As the light changed and the cars began to move, I told him the truth, that I did not have anything to give him that day.

Before we could drive off, Charles reached into his cup, pulled out one of his own dollars, and held it out to me. “Here,” he said. “Take this. Now you have something.”

I tried to give it back. He would not let me. He kept telling me, in his own words, that his blessings does not come from what he receives, but it comes from what he gives.

He told me that if he did not practice generosity, he would not receive his blessings. Then he told us to have a great day, and we drove off.

I have been sitting with that moment ever since.

After we drove off, this encounter stayed with me throughout the day, and it is landing in your inbox because his reverse generosity gave me pause and made me reflect on how much our world feels deprived of kindness right now (or in the words of Jesus, loving your neighbor as you love yourself).

But it was not the kind of generosity we usually think of. Sure, Charles gave me a dollar and would not take it back. But greater than that, he was giving a gift this world needs far more of, the gift of being seen and seeing others. And that alone is worth naming.

Charles saw us. And he used a gift that feels untapped right now in our world, the gift of being fully present, with joy and with kindness.

And before you dismiss these as too small to change anything, I want to offer three things I learned from a brother experiencing homelessness with nowhere to go:

1. We have lost the art of small acts of compassion and kindness: In a world this loud and this heavy, it is easy to grow numb. Charles reminded me that this is not true. A dollar, a name, a moment of being fully present and compassionate, none of these are small. We have not lost our compassion. We have lost our practice of it, and that is something we can pick back up if we choose to start again right now.

2. There is still good in the world: When we take in so much at once, we start to forget that good is still moving all around us. It does not always make the headlines. Sometimes it is standing at a stoplight, at home, in your community, at the gym, or in a gas station, in the ordinary moments the world has trained itself to walk past. Charles was proof to me that goodness has not left us. We just have to keep our eyes open enough, and humble enough, to notice where it actually lives.

3. Paying it forward matters: I held onto that dollar. Not long after, I was able to give it to someone else in the community who had a need a lot like Charles had. I told that person where the dollar came from, and they smiled. Charles will probably never know that his one act of generosity kept moving past him and reached another person who needed it. That is what kindness does when we let it go. It travels further than we will ever see.

I know how heavy the world can feel right now. I feel it too. But this week I was encouraged, and I was reminded that there is still good among us. It is often found in the places that get the least attention, carried by the people we are quickest to walk past.

After meeting Charles, I still believe the good we are all searching for is not only something we wait to receive. It is something we get to give.

Terence

We are also launching the Forever Forward Scholarship in partnership with HBCU Connect, a scholarship designed to directly invest in higher education for nontraditional students who have overcome homelessness, navigated poverty, and beaten the odds to get here. This scholarship is for the overcomers. For the student who didn’t have a straight path, a safety net, or someone telling them it was going to be okay, and kept going anyway.

We are starting with three small scholarships and 100% of contributions go directly to the student through HBCU Connect. If you want to get involved, reach out or donate here.

Tonight, I’m grateful to join my friend and colleague Vonnetta L. West, an advocate for love, justice, belonging, and nonviolence, and a nonviolence trainer with The King Center, for a conversation about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community.

We’ll explore compassion fatigue, belonging, justice, and what it means to continue caring for one another in a world that often feels disconnected and exhausted.

Check out the conversation LIVE later today.

This past week, I traveled to Washington, DC to speak alongside the National Homelessness Law Center against the criminalizing bills that keep spreading across the country and targeting people who are unhoused.

This matters deeply to me, because homelessness and poverty continue to rise across the country, and more than 320 cities now have laws aimed at people who are unhoused.

• If you are in Atlanta, we would love for you to volunteer and serve with Love Beyond Walls.

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• And if nothing else—send prayers and positivity as we continue to do this work.