The girl in this photo came up with the idea of baking cookies and taking them to the residents of a nearby nursing home. The lady in the bed is well past 100 years old and hadn’t had a visitor for more than three years.

The girl had no idea she’d run into the lady, of course, and probably wasn’t able to grasp the depth of the situation, but she did a good thing all the same.

A great deal of human suffering has been taking place behind closed doors in our time, in situations like these; it’s a hazard of the modern world. A century ago, the old lady would probably be living in someone’s home. (A grandchild, great nephew or the like.) She would not be cut-off from the observation of life, and she’d be far happier.

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No model of human life is perfect, and so, before going back to the mundane, see if you can think of some way to fill-in the cracks of our world’s present arrangements; to gift someone with direct human kindness.