Word 086
Beside Sarusawa Pond stands a small, quiet shrine called Uneme Shrine. Most visitors, drawn by the reflection of Kofuku-ji's five-story pagoda on the water, walk past it without ever noticing.
According to legend, the shrine was built long ago to console the spirit of a court lady who had lost the emperor's favor. She is said to have thrown herself into this very pond. To let her spirit gaze forever upon the water where her life had ended seemed, to the people of that time, too cruel to bear — so they quietly built the shrine facing the other way.
The small sign explaining its history is easy to miss. Yet that quiet, turned-away direction still remains today, beside Sarusawa Pond, as a trace of someone's care for someone else, from a time long past.
An encounter with another person can change the course of your life.
It is only natural to think, "I want to be of use to this person, if only to repay their kindness."
But when that feeling grows too strong, one's actions become self-serving.
And yet, to extinguish that feeling entirely would be lonely, too.
It is enough to help them just the right amount, quietly, without drawing attention to it.
There is no fixed way to show that you care for someone. Sometimes, a small kindness is simply this — quietly turning, just a little, the other way.