Sometimes the smallest things make all the difference. A well known fact, perhaps, but one I have been made particularly aware of on several recent occasions.
One day a few weeks ago, I was in the cafeteria, looking for a place to sit. I already had my food, but the only open chair was one of the armchairs with no table. I had no problem with that, and was happy to sit there. But as soon as I sat down with my plate on my lap, the guy in the chair next to me packed up his stuff in order to clear off the little table he was using and pushed the table closer to me. He didn't say anything, just smiled and gave me a thumbs up. Such a small thing, maybe, but it stuck in my thoughts. It's not that he was inconveniencing himself to help me - he was already finished eating, and I would have managed fine. But he noticed that there was something small he could do, and actually did it. Generally people seem to be either too absorbed in whatever they're doing to notice things like that, or, like me, too shy or reluctant for some other reason to initiate an interaction with a stranger. But why not do something like that? Who wouldn't appreciate that small gesture? There probably are a few people who would take it badly for whatever reason, but isn't it worth the tiny risk for the opportunity to make someone else's day better with no effort?

When I was a kid, I was frequently embarrassed when my parents initiated conversations with strangers. I assumed that the other party would have no interest in what one of my parents had to say, not because I thought badly of my parents in any way, but because I didn't understand how someone could enjoy the exchange of a few mostly meaningless words with a complete stranger. I still don't know exactly why it is true, but I understand that humans do indeed gain something from those small interactions. It makes sense in terms of evolution, that small interactions within a community help an individual form bonds and make allies, but I think I will continue to be in awe of the effect of a few small words or actions.

We need more balance in this life. However dismissive I might generally be of groups that make frequent use of words like “balance”, I do think it is important. We need more balance between action and thought, between noise and silence, between humanity and nature. We (I am certainly no exception) get so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we forget there is anything else. We go from one place to the next, concentrating only on the details of our own lives – school projects, work schedules, relationship problems, making dinner for the kids, paying the bills. To take our minds of the never-ending activity of our own lives, many of us sink into the couch at the end of the day to watch or read about the lives of people, real or fictional, who have even more worries than we do. Even if we prefer our entertainment without human drama, we rarely stop to think about its meaning. And this is exactly the problem: we rarely stop to think about anything at all.
Is this really a problem? Can something be gained from simply stopping to think about something, anything, unrelated to the usual personal concerns? Many people seem to manage moderate happiness without doing so regularly. Personally, I find that I am happier when I am busy than when I have nothing to do for weeks on end. But I also find that I am more at peace with myself and the world when I take time to ponder anything outside of my own life.
I would be foolish to believe that everyone thinks and feels in the same way that I do. But I really do think it is important to stop and think once in a while, and I think there are very real results. We complain that our children spend all of their time playing video games, that adults do nothing but work and watch TV. What is the problem with this? Is there anything inherently bad or evil about video games and TV? To my knowledge, no. The problem is that between our absorption in our own lives and our absorption in forms of entertainment that give us even less to think about, we pay almost no attention to the outside world. Whether it's something big, like ignorance of huge wars and famines, or something small, like being rude to the cashier at Starbucks, we forget too often that every other person in the world is just as real, just as valuable, just as much a sentient human being as we ourselves are. Not because we are cruel people incapable of caring about others, but because we forget. We forget that a girl killed in battle on another continent would have been married next month to her next-door neighbor, the boy who used to pull her pigtails and chase her down the street. We forget that the boy at Starbucks is the same age as our son, that he messed up the drinks because he was up past four in the morning studying for his archeology exam.
Some people really don't care as much as others, but most of us are just too distracted by our own lives to pay attention to anything else. We have no balance in our lives. This is not the fault solely of the modern lifestyle – evolution requires at least some degree of selfishness – but it is true nonetheless. We need more time to sit and think, away from the noise and commotion of humanity. What you choose to think about is your business. Whether it is human poverty or the configuration of leaves on a twig or the sound of words in another language or the names of the furthest stars you know, my hope is that it will be a reminder that there is a universe there, outside your head.
Now, perhaps we will not bring about world peace by sitting and thinking, but even if we remember long enough to be a little kinder to a single person, isn't that worth something?