I believe in Puff: When small gestures matter more than you could ever know | Opinion

Do you remember the song “Puff the Magic Dragon”? Peter, Paul and Mary at their absolute best. The lyrical ballad of a big-hearted magical creature and a little boy who loved as only a small boy can and who wholeheartedly believed in magic. Gifts offered. Gifts received. String. Sealing wax. Simplicity in a chimerical, illusory — and transient — setting. Because, with or without us, dragons live forever. Little boys do not.

However, could it be that some part of each of us does live forever? Could we, like Puff the Magic Dragon, be immortal? Or, looked at in a different light, could the things we give and receive last forever? Could that be our immortality? I’m not speaking about millions of dollars donated, years spent in exhausting labor, a self-denying life of do-gooding. I’m speaking of small windows of grace when something is given, something received and nothing is ever the same.

I have had such moments.

Some years ago, I was managing a large insurance agency in Salinas. Every day before work, I exercised at Lady Fitness. One particular very early morning, I was filling up my car on my way to the gym. A young man dressed in paint-speckled jeans and a T-shirt was using the pump just in front of mine.

His truck, a rather beat-up Datsun (before they became Nissans!), was also paint-stained. It seemed obvious that he was a tradesman on his way to work. He finished before I did, hung up the nozzle and then turned toward me. As he neared me, he said, “Bunny, I will never forget what you did for me.” He reached down, put his arms around me, lifted me off my feet in a big bear hug, put me back on my feet, got in his truck and drove away.

I will never know who he was.

Little Boys? They change. They grow up, become unrecognizable. We knew them when they were still wet clay, not yet fully formed. But something of us remained. That very small thing we did that mattered. If I had given him vast amounts of money or time, I would surely have remembered. No, I am convinced it was some small thing that mattered way beyond any physical means of measuring. That stayed.

There’s an example of this type of “thing that stays” in the New Testament. In one retelling of this story, the Good Judge is looking over the vast multitude assembled on the last day. He sees one and says, “I remember you. Come up here with me.” He calls another. And yet another. These people do as they are bidden, but they are confused.

“What did I do?” each wonders. “I don’t remember anything special that I ever did.”

The Good Judge notices their confusion.

To the first one, he says, “You? You were on your way to work. You saw me on the street — dirty, dazed, barely able to stand. And I was hungry. You stopped, got out of your car, gave me your lunch and then — without waiting for thanks of any kind — you drove away. I remember you.”

“And you? I thought I would die of thirst. You were out for your morning run. You noticed me — a stranger, alone. You gave me your water bottle. And then, you were gone. I never saw you again. But I remember you.”

“And you? I was young and stupid. I was caught doing something unlawful. Tried and convicted, I was sent to prison. A loser. Friendless. But one day you visited me. You didn’t know me. But you saw me, really saw me. A dumb kid who was alone and scared to death. You visited me. I do remember you.”

The Good Judge further explained, “You didn’t realize it, but when you performed a gesture of loving kindness to one of the most desperately unlovable, you did it to me.”

Small acts of grace: a bite to eat, a drink of water, a moment of time. The most important things cost nothing and demand very little of us. And yet, perhaps, these are the things that are immortal — lasting when everything physical about us is long gone and forgotten. Those small moments when something is given, something received and, in the twinkling of any eye, nothing is ever the same. Maybe that’s the magic. Puff knew that all the time.

I believe in Puff.