From a friend and fellow Metta Mentee

Pace e Bene Blog
The Greatness of a Smile
July 16th, 2009 - by Leah Watkiss

Last Friday, my fellow Metta Mentees and I participated in a day of service at St. Anthony’s Foundation in San Francisco. Founded in the Franciscan tradition in 1950, the foundation was built to repsond to the needs of the hungry and the homeless. Located in San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin District, known for its significant poverty, homelessness, and crime, the foundation has served over 34 million free meals to the San Francisco community. Its services have grown over the years so it now includes a free medical clinic, a clothing and housewares program, rehabilitation programs and services, and a social work center in addition to serving approximately 2,600 meals a day. After learning about the foundation, our group was divided into several smaller groups. Each group was sent to assist in a different service. I was in the group assigned to the dining room. I spent equal amounts of time serving and cleaning tables.

Now, I have a vast amount of experience in the customer service sector. I have worked as a customer service representative in a bookstore, a garden centre, a kitchenware store, and a non-profit organization. In each of these positions I wore a nametag or identified myself when answering phone calls. In all of my time as a customer service representative, I might have one person per week of work bother to call me by my name. Most people just called me "Miss" or "Ma’am." I was not a human person with feelings and dignity, I was an appendage of the company that I worked for. This was especially true of interactions on the phone, where I was not physically present to the person I was helping. In fact, if someone did ask me my name, I would get nervous. Occasionally, I would help a customer/donor who made a note of my name to make a personal connection. But more usually, a customer/donor making note of my name created a paranoia in me that they were going to report me to my superiors for inadequate or unsatisfactory service. Because of this past experience, I was not prepared for what happened at the St. Anthony’s Foundation dining room.

As I went around serving meals and cleaning tables, almost every person in the room addressed me by name. Those who didn’t were usually addressing me from behind and could not see my nametag. Not only did people call me by name, they even bothered to ask me how to pronounce it! In my life, I have often been called "Lee-ah" instead of "Lay-ah." Some have even called me "Lee." As a child this caused me no end of frustration. However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to respond to what I’m called, especially when it’s by someone I will likely never see again. But not only did people in the dining room call me by my name, many of them stopped to ask me what the pronunciation was and would continue to use my name as I made my rounds and returned to their table. I cannot express adequately in words the effect that their using my name had on me. But I felt a real connection with these people in a way I had rarely experienced in my other service experiences. I felt like a person, and individual with dignity. As a customer service representative, I have been judged, verbally abused, harassed, yelled at, and sworn at. I have been dehumanized and humiliated by people who ignored the fact that I am a human being with feelings and emotions. I won’t pretend that everybody at the dining hall was this friendly, and I am sure that they have had people come in who engaged in those violent actions, but whereas in my previous experience anonymity was the norm, here is was the exception. These people who live largely anonymous lives on the street - passed by without a second glance in a large, bustling city - reached out and connected with me at a basic, human level. This is an experience I will remember whenever I walk past someone needy on the street.

Last night, I was walking to the train station in the late evening. I stopped by a bank and got out some cash beside a bus stop with two obviously underprivileged men. The old me, the person I was before I came to the Metta Center and Pace e Bene and learned about nonviolence, would have felt very intimidated. In fact, the old me would likely have chosen to visit the bank on another day rather than show these men I had cash and walk past these men with my head firmly facing the ground or the other side of the street. But the new me calmly walked by, turned my head, smiled, and wished the men a good evening. They, in turn, asked me how I was. I replied that I was well and asked how they were. They responded in kind and told me I had a beautiful smile. I thanked them and continued on to the train station, beaming.

Many people do not know how to lead a nonviolent life. They think of large, social movements like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. "They were different," people say. "They were born different: to lead, to do great things." But we are all born to lead and do great things. Great things does not have to mean freeing India from British rule or overcoming Jim Crow laws. It can be something as simple as smiling at a stranger and, by your smile, saying "You are important. You are a human being. I am glad that you are alive."

Peace and all good.