Life's Immeasurables: Dumplings and a Man named John
Even if we can't immediately change the big things, we have the capacity to connect with other people and foster more meaningful lives.
It all began with sticky rice dumplings.
There is a dumpling shop in Chinatown in San Francisco that I sometimes walk by. From time to time, I stop in and pick up a couple of shrimp and chive dumplings as I work toward my ten thousand steps for the day.
One evening, I spotted a particular type of dumpling at the display counter that I had never seen before. Turns out it was a sticky rice dumpling. I was curious and decided to buy one. As it was nearing closing time, the friendly manager gave me two sticky rice dumplings, though I wanted to buy just one.
A couple of minutes later, after I left the shop, I noticed an elderly man sitting on a street corner surrounded by cardboard boxes. He looked lost in thought, staring into space.
As I didn’t need two dumplings, I stopped and asked him if he might like to have one. He said yes.
A few days later, I saw him again, sitting at the same spot. And there he was yet again on another day. I soon realized this was “his corner,” not far from the dumpling shop where I had gotten to know the friendly manager.
The next time I visited the shop, I bought four dumplings instead of two. I stopped by his corner and asked if he might like some. He said yes, so I handed him two and asked his name. “John,” he replied.
This ritual has evolved over time. On the days I walk through Chinatown, I now stop by his corner first to ask if he’d like some dumplings or maybe a barbeque pork bun. Most of the time, he says yes.
With the onset of winter my walks have become less frequent, and the ritual has slowed down. Regardless, I find myself thinking of John.
Given the magnitude of problems in the world, it’s all too easy to feel powerless. And even when we are working to improve conditions, change can be slow to come about.
That is where moments of genuine human connection make all the difference in keeping us going through difficult times.
In the case of the dumplings, there are no earnings to measure, no donor pledges, no viewer counts, no social media likes and other metrics of our time. It’s just a moment of simple human connection.
And as I continue to implment solutions on a larger-scale, this I know:
Sometimes, on Jackson Street in San Francisco, there is a man named John. And when I give him some dumplings, I enter into a world outside the usual metrics of “productivity.”
And in that moment, I am reminded of the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, the man for whom the city is named: “It is in giving that we receive.”
I offer John food for his stomach; he offers me food for my soul.
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When we have encounters like you had, I think we begin to see that there is no giver, no taker. I think I just learned that when I wrote it. Your story, like rice dumplings, stuck to me.