Watch the subway passengers who surround you: tired, harassed people: men late for work; women rushing to pick up children from daycare; singles dreading another lonely night in a one-room apartment with ramen for dinner and the TV for company.
Fatigue is what you see in every face. Here's one thing you can do to help (I read this someplace): send a big hit of loving energy to each fellow passenger. Phrase it how you will, but here are some suggestions. You might say: may you dwell in your heart, for the first person. May you be free from suffering for the next. May you be healed, for the third. May you be at peace, for the next.
Keep the mantras flowing. See each person. Look into their eyes. Smile. Wish them well. Wish them well.
You might want to ask them what burden they would like to lay down, but you are too shy, or you don't want to intrude. So you send them loving energy and wish them well and hope that your prayers give them ease.
Ease. That's what we all need. May we all live our lives with grace and ease.
There. Doesn't that feel better than just hiding your nose in a book? Or puzzling out a Sudoku? There's time enough to do that when you're at loose ends at home. But for now, here on the subway, you have a job to do (should you choose to accept it—and I hope you will): provide support. Offer energy. Relieve these strangers of their deep suffering and the heavy burdens. Make yourself useful, as Eileen, my mother, used to say.
I doubt that Eileen envisioned advice like mine, a mixed tray-load of selections from the cafeteria approach to spirituality. But I'll bet she said her silent Catholic prayers whenever she sensed someone needing help. Taking a broad perspective, there's no real difference between her approach and mind: each is a quiet, contemplative way of making oneself useful.
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