“It’s just a light lunch. I hope that’s okay,” my grandmother cautioned as we discussed our Monday date on Sunday evening.

“Grandma,” I reassuringly replied, “I’m sure it will be perfect and lovely.”

In that moment, I did not realize the monumental weight of those words as they delicately danced off of my tongue.

For several weeks we had discussed setting up a lunch date so that I could meet a dear friend of hers. This particular friend had stumbled into a season of life that was wrought with overwhelmingly doleful news. In an effort to provide a little cheering up (and as any proud grandmother would), my grandmother shared our wedding photos and videos with her friend. None of us could have anticipated what the result would be.

My amazingly beautiful grandmother at our wedding (3.30.18).

My mom and I arrived early to lunch, my nerves quietly welling inside of me. I certainly felt a sense of pressure to live up to the expectations that had been crafted by the skillful minds of our wedding photographers and videographer. Fear pushed me to question whether or not this lady would be disappointed in what she encountered in my presence compared to what she had gleaned through the films. I tried to mask it by focusing on the jovial conversation being carried on between my grandparents and my mom.

When my grandma’s friend (we’ll call her Alice for the sake of anonymity) arrived, I threw on a smile and tried to act confident, all the while feeling worried about what words were going to stumble out of my mouth and how Alice was going to handle picking them up. We passed through the preliminary, getting-to-know you questions without much hiccuping and surprisingly, no awkward silence. The introverted side of me, which almost always dominates the extroverted sliver of my being, struggles and stresses over meeting new people, so this was a quiet victory for me.

What transpired as our conversation gracefully turned to more complex and challenging dialogue was truly inspiring. Of the infinite nuggets of wisdom I earned through our conversation, I want to highlight just a couple right now. Alice is a woman who is deeply empathetic, a lifetime learner, and purely humble. I don’t use those words as a means to just briefly describe her; she is by far one of the most genuinely beautiful people I have ever met. She encompasses all the goodness that I believe humanity is still capable of demonstrating. Throughout her life, Alice has had what she considers to be divine, transcendent interactions with people she views as gifts from God with specific messages for her. She has been drawn to them largely because of the calmness and serenity they bring to her. They are a select few, and sometimes they aren’t even people that she ever has the chance to get to know on a personal, intimate level. Yet, she recognizes the beauty they bring to the world and her life, and she takes the time to appreciate and absorb that beauty and all that comes with it. Each time it happens, which isn’t often, she writes down the name of the person and posts it somewhere in her house where she will regularly see it. Their name becomes a reminder of the specific gifts that person has brought to her life and it causes serenity to continue washing over her in the moments it is most needed. She expressed to me that what struck her most as she looked at our photographs and watched our video was the evident authenticity of our love. When she saw it, she immediately recognized it for what it was and became overwhelmed by joy, gratitude, and, most of all, peace. Even though we had not met, she felt an immediate connection to me that surpassed anything that could be explained by the laws of this world. It was something far more spiritual.

At one point in the conversation, Alice was digging into the insight I have gained through teaching and working with teenagers. In asking about teenage maturity and how I observe it during the year I work with my students, we turned to the concept of respect. She told a story about one of her relatives and how shocked she and her husband had been to not only hear how she had been disrespectful to a teacher but then proceeded to gloat about it. She then wondered if I had any potential understanding of why this girl might behave this way and whether or not it was common behavior. I thought about it for a moment before telling her that sadly, it is not uncommon. My belief is that the direction our society has steered in has given many of us, and youth especially, the perception that everything is about the individual and what the individual wants. In turn, this has caused the human display of empathy to significantly shrink. While the truth stung, I could tell that Alice understood. Empathy is what brought Alice to me, empathy is what connected us during the time we shared, and the absence of empathy is what is tearing our world apart.

What Alice does is a profound way of outpacing ordinary. How often do we come across people in our lives, whether in person or otherwise, who are a vehicle of inspiration for us? And how often do those people all too quickly fade from our memory and hearts as we get busy with the things right in front of us and the things yet to come? How often do we fail altogether to recognize these people due to the frenzy of life or cease to look behind us to where those we did recognize once existed? Even though I have become one of these rare people to Alice, I don’t reflect on this conversation to puff up my own ego. Rather, I value the truth and beauty Alice returned to me during our conversation. I may have done something for her without intending to, but she did far more for me by choosing to share her heart, vulnerably expressing very raw, real, and astoundingly angelic thoughts and feelings. In the midst of our chaotic lives and our chaotic world, we should take a moment to breathe in the example of this un-ordinary act of meditation, gratitude, and peace that Alice practices. If we can take a cue from Alice and pick up our piece of the thread that weaves us all together, then maybe we can slowly reclaim the humanity that all too frequently slips through our fingers.

There’s a long-standing, get-to-know you question that most of us have been called upon to consider and answer at least once. That is, if you could spend a day with one person, living or not, who would you choose? I just might choose Alice. The conversation I had with her, the joy she brought to me, and the beauty of her spirit are things that will remain with me for the duration of my life. If you ever have the honor of meeting an Alice in your lifetime, soak in every moment and every word you can. Just as angels, Alices walk among us every day and have the grace, kindness, and empathy that can make humanity soar.

This one is for you, Alice.