You’ve probably seen them. People wearing t-shirts that say some form of “Be a Good Person.” Or another version “Just be a Good Human.” Or, “If you can be anything, be kind.” Each time I encounter someone wearing this adorning their chest it lifts my spirits and reminds me once again that, mostly, people really want to put their best selves into the world. And they want to encourage others to do the same. Though what we read or see in the news accounts of our daily walk is often to the contrary, there are people walking around who have made it their mission to say, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s another way.”

I thought about this message when reading about Joe Mauer, a favorite player for the Minnesota Twins who was recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For those who have followed him and like to wave their Minnesota pride at any opportunity, Mauer is a St. Paul boy who played his whole career for his hometown team, and this honor seemed so deserved.. I remember seeing him play once when he came back after an injury that had sidelined him for a long time. When he walked onto the field the crowd went ballistic as he came to the plate. He did not disappoint as he hit a home run first thing. I can still get a little emotional thinking about that moment. 

But what struck me in the newspaper account of his career was that his Mother, who has always been a significant influence in his life, always told him two things: Be a good competitor but first be a good person. From what I read and hear about him, he has embodied that message and sends that goodness into the world. Well done, Mom.

Last week I was sitting having lunch in a favorite cafe. I was reading a book that was really engaging and eating a sandwich, drinking an iced tea. I was pretty engrossed in my reading and not paying full attention as I sat my glass down on the edge of a tray. It tipped sending tea and ice onto the table, the opposite chair and the floor. Before I could even get to my feet to begin clean up, a young woman who had been sitting nearby jumped up, grabbed extra napkins and started mopping up my mess. All the time I was thanking her she was saying”It’s okay. It’s okay.” We both righted the situation and sat back to finish our lunch as I looked around at all the other folks who had also witnessed my faux-pas. Perhaps one of them would have joined in to help me but this young woman had acted so quickly in her effort to be a good person that they didn’t have the chance. Needless to say, my sense of the goodness of humans was lifted high that day.

Later that day as I was cleaning and organizing some papers, I came across this poem I had kept from a journal of my college alma mater. It is titled “The Whole Shebang Up for Debate” by Laura M. Andre:

Today I gave a guy a ride,
caught in a cloudburst
jogging down East Mill Street.
Skinny, backpacked, newspaper
a makeshift shield, unsafe
under any circumstances.
I don’t know what possessed me.

I make bad decisions, am forgetful,
cling to structure and routine
like static electricity to polyester,
a. predicament of living under
the facade I always add to myself.

Said he needed to catch a GoBus,
shaking off droplets before climbing in.
He gabbed about Thanksgiving plans,
his mom’s cider basted turkey,
grandma’s pecan crusted pumpkin pie.

It was a quick masked ride.
Bless you, he said, unfolding himself
from the car. No awkward goodbyes,
no what do I owe you? Just Bless you
and a backward wave.

At the stop sign, my fingers stroked
the dampness where he sat minutes before.

Sometimes life embraces you
so unconditionally, it shifts
your body from shadow
into a full flung lotus of light.

We could argue at the wisdom of such an encounter yet what is clear in this story is that the writer chose not only to see the goodness in another but also to send goodness into the world. The young woman who helped clean up a mess I had created chose, quickly I might add, to act out of goodness. In a time when competition can lead people to not only use hurtful, unkind words and actions, may we all err on the side of being good humans, shifting our bodies…and perhaps the whole world… from shadow into a ‘full flung lotus of light.’