If this doesn't touch you, then you aren't human.

These hands hold all the power that we can handle, and more than we sometimes deserve...

Pic via NY Times, rights reserved.

I'm a pretty jaded bastard. My profession has built an ingrained misttrust of people, and has exposed me to the deepest underbelly of their motives and their capacity for evil and mendacity. However, sometimes I read something that sincerely touches me, and completely restores my faith in us, and in the human condition. 

Today was such an instance. This morning, while perusing the CNN on-line edition, a "fluff" article was linked under "Most Mailed" stories. It was entitled "Why Real Men DO Buy Flowers", and was -as you'd guess, about buying flowers for the woman you love. How to describe this little human interest piece? Powerful. Simply powerful. Here is an excerpt from John DeVore's piece...you owe it to yourself to read it all.

Most of what I know about women I learned from how my dad treated my mother. I'd be a better man if I followed his example more fastidiously, but I haven't, and that's partially why I've spent so many years driving relationships off of cliffs. But some lessons stick out.  

Theirs was a love affair that lasted four decades. He would sing to her in public, and she'd blush and beg for him to stop. They never seemed to tire of each others' gentle words. And 45 minutes after he died, on my mother's birthday, FedEx walked into the ICU with her present -- a fancy brand-name bag that escapes me, but that I'm pretty sure is sold in piles on the streets of New York.

While my mother was in a street fight with doctors (and a dependably cruel universe) for every dwindling minute of my dad's life, he had been sitting up in his hospital bed, buying her something he knew she'd love.

This touched something deep and visceral within me; it reached that part of my soul that carries still an infinite capacity for patience, for love, for the simple pleasure of sharing time. It reminded me that sometimes, though we be not gods, we can create whole universes by bringing a smile to our loved ones.