Monday mornings are hard for everyone- whether they’re a student, employee, or a mom that has to get their kids out the door. Mondays mean the start of another work week which is enough to make anyone grouchy. I am very irritable in the morning, especially before my morning coffee. As Lorelai Gilmore would say, my mantra is “coffee coffee coffee.” But sometimes even after my morning coffee, I can’t shake off little annoyances. Just this past week, a car cut me off in traffic and I started to get legitimately angry because it meant I would get to work later. Now no one loves being cut off in traffic, but I realized I was so focused on my own needs that I got all bent out of shape over a 10 second delay to work.

When I step back and examine my day, I often focus on whether or not my own needs were met. “Did I finish that project?”, “Did I get to hang out with my friends?”, “Did I get everything done that I needed to?” but I forget to ask myself important questions like, “Did I love enough today?” In a culture that’s so focused on constant busyness, it's easy to be blind to the needs of our neighbors. Instead of getting upset at the truck that cut me off, I should have let them pass me without complaint. I could have offered up 10 seconds of my time as an act of love for that stranger. Maybe letting them into traffic would have turned their whole day around.

My favorite Saint (one of many) Maximilian Kolbe said a lot of wise things during his lifetime. One of my favorite quotes of his is, “A single act of love makes the soul return to life.” So often I’ll start my morning with a bad attitude but then a friend does something nice for me, whether it be buying me coffee or writing a note on my mirror- and it turns my whole day around. It’s no longer just a cup of coffee, rather it's a reminder that someone in my life took time out of their day to say “I love you” in a small way. Five minutes of your time can change the course of someone’s entire day.

Receiving an act of love is beautiful, but true joy is found in giving -especially when you feel like you have nothing left to give. Life can knock us down and we become so fixated on the thing that caused us to fall, we never look back up again. But it’s so freeing to focus on the needs of others, instead of constantly poking at our wounds that just need time to heal. Dying to ourselves a little bit more each day is the antidote to an inward-looking culture. The amount of hurt in the world can seem daunting and impossible to fix, but it starts with showing love to those in our own life that need it most. Love refuses nothing.