There’s a man in my town who says “Good morning.” This may not seem remarkable, but I assure you that it is. You’ll see him on the towpath or riding around town on his bike, sometimes wearing a hi-viz vest, and when he says good morning to you, you feel that it is a good morning, that now it will be a good morning. I worked with him once at a restaurant, so I assumed he was friendly because we’re friends, but other people in town who don’t know him said they look for him, too, and they call him “the good morning guy.” I’m not sure what it is about him that works this magic. He’s not loud or overly effusive, he’s certainly cheerful — he always was so even when our job got stressful, which it frequently did. But it’s something deeper and warmer than that. It feels like kindness, like an honest warmth of emotion that’s quite rare. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately because I’ve resolved to try to be more like him. It’s not a New Year’s resolution, exactly, more of an every day resolution. I can obviously never be magical in the way he is, but I can do my best to be cheerful and kind, and to be genuinely glad to see friends and strangers as I walk about the world.

I’ve been thinking about it, too, because the start of a new year always feels like a new morning, a new beginning. It’s a chance to shake off the fog of dreams and nightmares and set out new. Here’s a strange connection that I made. Recently I looked up the meaning of the words at the end of TS Eliot’s dark and brilliant poem, The Waste Land. These words conclude the last section of the poem, called What the Thunder said. I’ve had them in my head for decades, but I’d never taken the time to find out what they mean.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih     shantih     shantih

It turns out they’re from The Upanishads, a series of Hindu philisophical discourses between a teacher and a student that question pretty much everything about the world and our place in it. These words are from, specifically, the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, The Great Forest Teaching. I don’t pretend to understand it, but it is very beautiful to me. It describes demons, gods, and men responding to the same word — the same syllable — in different ways. Here is the passage:

“The descendeands of Prajapati, of three kinds, gods, human beings, and demons, lived as brahmacarins with their father prajapati. When they had completed their studentship, the gods said, ‘Teach us, father.’

He spoke to them the syllable DA. ‘Did you understand?’

‘We understood,’ they said. ‘You told us, “Be self-controlled (damyata).”‘

‘OM,’ he said. ‘You understood.’

Then the human beings said to him, ‘Teach us, father.’

He spoke to them the same syllable. DA. ‘Did you understand?’

‘We understood,’ they said,’You told us,”Give (datta).”‘

‘OM,” he said. ‘You understood.’

‘Then the demons said to him, ‘Teach us father.’

He spoke to them the syllable, DA. ‘Did you understand?’

‘We understood,’ they said, ‘You told us,”Be compassionate (dayadhvam).'”

‘OM,’ he said. ‘You understood.’

This is what the divine voice that is thunder repeats: ‘DA DA DA,’ ‘Be self-controlled! Give! Be compassionate!'”

You see? Even the demons understand! There’s another part of this Upanishad that seems to almost describe The Waste Land, and that ends (as many passages do) in the words Shantih shantih shantih. “Lead us from the unreal to the real,/ Lead us from darkness to light,/ Lead us from death to immortality, /Om Let there be peace peace peace.” I have also read it translated as “Guide us from ignorance to knowledge.” And this is where it all comes back to new light, a new morning, a new day, a new year. The world feels like a wasteland, at times, dark and hopeless, full of ignorance, hate, prejudice, and war. The last few months, the last few years, there has been so much horror and despair. We can only hope to be guided out of it, we can only hope that all the gods and humans and demons will learn the lessons of kindness and compassion. And Shantih shantih shantih. Peace peace peace.

It’s beautiful to me that this these words mean different things to different people, and they’re all the right thing. All words, especially words in translation, especially words describing ephemeral things like peace and kindness, have shifting, moving meanings. There are so many kinds of kindness, so many kinds of compassion, and so many kinds of peace. We can all search for them and practice them in our own way, according to what they mean for us. Maybe it won’t be taught to us by a yogi in a great forest teaching. Maybe it will be the voice of the thunder or the wind or the rain. Maybe it will be in the voice of a kind and cheerful man, with no thought of his great importance, telling you “good morning.”

And so I say to you, on this the dawning of the new year, and with all the kindness and cheer I can muster, “GOOD MORNING!”