By the Lips, From the Heart

Gratitude as a posture of the heart

Call me a pearl-clutcher, but the necessity of good manners is a hill I’d die on. The normalization of vulgarity is what’s killing our ability to be gentle and graceful.

Swearing has become an appendage of humor; few people send follow-up thanks after dinners; crumbs on café tables are commonly left for the next customer to deal with. Like an itchy sweater we’ve grown accustomed to, bad manners have corrupted good morals: We’ve become desensitized to the irritations of our daily interactions—even if it makes us uncomfortable or hurt.

This tweet was inspired by the prevalence of ‘ghosting’. Often, whether in job hunting or within the dating scene, we’d rather vanish from an unwanted situation than face the discomfort of an awkward or shameful confrontation. While some of us avoid tough conversations completely, others choose to ‘get it over with’ with a complete lack of sensitivity.

The term NPC (non-playing character) captures this mindset, and the ease of crafting social media personas has spread the fashionableness of rudeness. We’ve forgotten that the person on the other end of our conversation is just like us—leading a life equally as complicated and tangled. They, too, grapple with misunderstandings, insecurities about appearances, and the mundane labor of finding matching socks from the dryer. They, too, have fallen in love, grieved over dead pets, and felt nostalgic about endless summers.

At the bus stop, Likhachev, 1984

Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them.

—Charles Bukowski

Despite our curated presentations of uniqueness, we share more common ground than we might believe. Deep down, our desires are the same: We want to be loved, to be accepted in spite of our flaws, and to be treated like someone who matters. A gentle person is somebody who makes everybody feel like a ‘somebody’.

Manners reflect the posture of your heart.

This isn’t about how you organize shoes in the foyer or follow etiquettes at the dinner table; it’s about character. Manners aren’t what you do at a client meeting—in fact, they’re not what you do at all, they’re who you are. Manners run deep in all of your actions, from the way you catch a waitress’ attention at a restaurant to the way you care for the sick to the way you write a cold email. It’s deeper than “being nice”, it’s a stance on how you treat others.

Thanksgiving isn’t just a holiday; it’s a posture of the heart. Gratitude isn’t just a response to receiving something or having a favor fulfilled; it’s a perspective that shapes our view of the world. Consequently, good things aren’t solely the product of hard work or merit—after all, it’s harder to feel thankful for something you believe you’re entitled to—but can also emerge from gratitude: giving thanks has the magical ability to transform whatever you have into enough.

The mouth speaks what the heart is full of. —Luke 6:45

You can always tell who someone is by their fruits. Who they are results from their beliefs and actions. What is spoken from the lips reveals what resides in the heart. High quality is always the accumulation and intentional maintenance of high standards. What is good, persistently and consistently, must always start with a good heart.

~

As always, thank you for reading.

Sherry