We all need to feel wanted and appreciated, and elderly widows very often feel a profound lack of that: Their husbands have died, many of their friends and family members have died, and their children are grown and busy. There may still be people who care about them, but it’s not remotely the same for them as when they were young.

This gentleman grasped this lack of active appreciation for elderly women and went about to fix it. And so, every year he hosts a Valentine’s Day lunch for local widows, especially those in nursing homes. By doing so, he not only brings immediate joy to the women, but he helps them recover warm and loving memories from their past.

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Before turning back to the mundane, see if you can imagine variations on this theme: Things you might do to help people recover important and productive memories; memories and appreciations that time may have stolen from them.

This appeared in London. A young woman took a small clothing rack, added a cover to protect from the elements, and placed it on the street as the weather turned cold.

This is the kind of action that any number of people could take with a minimum of time and effort… and it matters. It especially mattered that it was a sole individual, acting on her own will. By doing it, she learned and/or affirmed, in Carl Jung’s words, that something good could come out of her own soul.

In other words, she demonstrated that she was fertile as a being. And the most important person she demonstrated it to was herself.

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Before going back to the mundane, take a moment to remember and recount when good things came out of you; not at someone else’s prodding, but directly out of you. Then try to spend a few more minutes considering what else could grow in you and come out of you into the world.

Developmentally disabled people, aside from the limits imposed by their disabilities, are full humans, with the full range of human needs and feelings. What you are looking at here is a first date between two such disabled people.

True enough, there are things that disabled people cannot do, but those limits are specific: they don’t negate the full spectrum of abilities, only certain ones. And those which are not negated ought not be ignored or suppressed.

That is, we must default to seeing them as full people. As Simone Weil once noted, “The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.” And that giving of attention is something we must learn to do.

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So, before you go back to the mundane, decide that in the future, you’ll see the sick and suffering as full people, not objects in categories. Because if you can, you’ll begin to see everyone as a full person rather than an object in a category… and the world will be much improved by it.

A New York cab driver was dispatched to a very mundane pickup, taking someone across town. But what he found was a woman in her 90s, leaving her home for the last time and headed to a hospice. She was alone, having no family left.

Once the cabbie understood the situation, he quietly shut off the meter and drove her past the places of her life: the building where she worked as an elevator operator, where she and her husband had lived as newlyweds, a building that used to be a dance hall.

Finally she said she was tired, and the driver took her to the hospice, where he politely refused payment. Afterward, he decided that this was the most important thing he had done in his life.

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The moments that matter most to us are very often unexpected. So, before you walk back into the mundane, decide that you’ll stay primed for an opportunity to build meaning into your life, and to help those who need it. The fact is, or course, is that all of us need help at times. And so we must help others, if only to earn the help that we’ll need along the way.

This professor had a student whose baby-sitter failed at the last moment. Not knowing what to do, the student brought her child to class and hoped for the best. As you can see, the professor picked up the child and carried her through most of the lesson. This is what people do for one another when they’re not constrained by blind rules.

The beautiful moments of life arise when we see one another directly, not as players of roles or fillers of positions. Our actions create beauty and life when we see direct causes and effects, not actions punishable or unpunishable by blind rules and blind enforcement.

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Before you go back to the mundane, please consider how seeing one another directly has contributed to the euphoric, life-confirming moments of your life. And after sitting with those remembrances for a few minutes, see where they lead you.

One of the gentlemen in this photo watches for lonely strangers in his city, then invites them to his apartment one evening per week. This is one such gathering.

Humans, since the industrial revolution, and especially when moving to a new city for work, have been far more atomized than they tended to be before. People need other people. In pre-industrial times we got far more of this, and it was generally quite healthy for us. Other people round-off the ragged edges we sometimes form, and keep us in touch with factors outside ourselves. The opinions of others also undercut mass manipulation.

The expectations of others can be difficult for us at times, but being atomized carries a more volatile set of problems. These people have found an organic solution to them.

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So, before going back to the mundane, decide that you’ll watch for lonely strangers, and that you’ll do something for them, even if it is just a kind word. We must notice, and we must act.

We keep saying that it’s the simple things that change the world, and this is one of them. It was an icy day in Memphis, and this young man when out of his way to help an older lady navigate the difficult sidewalks.

We are born and wired to help one another, and by so doing we are birthing life and goodness into the universe. That may sound grandiose, but it’s true all the same. Acts of kindness like this change the world: they change the people giving and receiving them, they change the people seeing them, and ripple effects continue from there.

Everything we do, good or bad, changes the world, and future generations will very definitely be affected by them.

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Before venturing into the mundane, see if you can recall a time when someone went out of their way to do something nice for you; someone who had no real hope of reward, but did something nice simply because it would help or comfort you. Spend a few minutes with that recognition; you may be surprised what it plucks inside of you.

This invoice speaks quite well on its own. Please spend a moment reviewing it.

Businesses do things like this more often than you might think. Long-term commerce, as it happens, engages human virtues. One-shot trades (like the proverbial used-car sale) don’t, but ongoing commerce with customers buying over and over (as at a grocery) cultivates humane and reasonable behavior.

What we’re seeing here is a company operator who had virtues cultivated inside him or her, and is acting accordingly.

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So, before venturing back into the mundane, please spend a few moments with this invoice, and with this comment from a historian named John Maxcy Zane:

Trade makes for honesty, fair dealing, mutual comprehension, sanity and soundness, toleration of others, peace among men, aggregations of capital, division of labor, the ease and comfort and grace of life, the leisure for study, and the amelioration of customs and manners that produces so large a part of civilization.

It doesn’t take supreme skill or even supreme compassion to birth beauty and goodness into the world; it just takes action, and most of those beautiful actions will be well within the bounds of normalcy.

The owner of this restaurant observed that someone was going through their trash for food, regularly. Then he or she took the transformative step of seeing them as a whole person, not merely a thing playing the role of “homeless.” They posted the sign you see here, inviting the hungry person in for a simple meal.

This is how humans help humans, to all of our benefit: the giver and the recipient of course, but more importantly the observers, who see that such actions are, and ought to be, part of life for all intelligent and moral beings.

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So, before you return to the mundane, please remember a time when you did something like this, or situations where you’d like to. Spend time with the thought and see where it leads you.

Luis Soriano, a teacher in rural Columbia, took it upon himself to run a mobile library, using two of his burros (donkeys). He carries books between small towns, hoping to improve the next generation. And books do improve their readers.

There are better and worse books, of course (and a few that are actually bad), but the act of reading a book is considerably deeper, and more effectual on the inside, than video, reading snippets or in most cases even more effective than listening to audio.

Sr. Soriano made himself a book evangelist, apparently at his own expense. There’s something deeply noble and deeply rewarding about that.

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So, before returning to mundane thoughts, please recall some times when you read something deeply… when a meaningful book changed something inside you. Consider ways to give that experience to others. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it will fall flat, but assuredly nothing will happen until you try.