Have you ever received a small kindness from someone that changed the course of your life? I have, and I didn’t see it coming.
Earlier in my life I was an extremely introverted, conservative young man who had just spent twelve and a half years working and caring for a critically ill wife. When Claudia passed, I didn’t get out much. I was caved in with grief, with almost no friends and no real social life. What pulled me out began with a camera and a stranger’s arm around my shoulders.
The back row
I discovered renaissance festivals, starting with one in Irwindale. Every weekend I walked the grounds taking thousands of photographs, and I always ended up sitting in front of the belly dancers. At that point in my life, filled with grief and completely closed off, the color, the movement, and the music were exactly what I needed. They calmed me and made me feel alive. I sat in the back row with a telephoto lens because I wasn’t up to being near people.
I put thousands of those photos online for anyone to use however they liked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the dancers found them, and before long my pictures were all over social media. I’d become known in that little world without knowing it.
Marjhani
One day, during a break between shows, a dancer walked toward me. She’d large tattoos running up her arms and across her back, and a few piercings. She frightened me. She didn’t fit my narrow view of the world and I’d no idea how to deal with her. Before I could retreat, she came up beside me, put her arm around me, gave me a huge hug, and thanked me for all the photographs.
Her name is Marjhani BellaMorte, and she’s now one of my dearest friends. She invited me to sit in the front row, center seat, so I could take better pictures. She told me I was now officially a member of the tribe, and she introduced me to everyone. Suddenly, after years of nothing but work and a sick wife, I was part of a community, dancers, band members, and everyone who made the shows happen. That changed my life.
The butterfly effect
Over the next few years my photography improved and my world opened. I photographed more than twelve hundred belly dance shows, dozens of private shoots, over three hundred renaissance festivals, a few wrestling matches, a mermaid pageant, and even a few weddings. The dancers even coaxed me up on stage to dance a few times, though no photographs of that survive, thankfully. I began flying around the country to shoot festivals and the outdoors, and, slowly, I started letting people back into my life.
Years later, I left my corporate job to start my ghostwriting business.
It’s remarkable how one moment, one gift from another person, can lead to such a large change. It’s the butterfly effect, one small motion rippling out into consequences no one could predict. Marjhani’s hug was a small kindness. It helped bring me back to life. So I’ll ask you what I always ask: what small kindness has changed your world?