Sitting down in Central Park and reading Little Women, I was drawn into the world of the March sisters. Pretty and responsible Meg, loud and boisterous Jo, and fancy little Amy drew me into their midst, but the sister who touched me the most was sweet and gentle Beth. She was peaceful and patient, helpful and hardworking, and always willing to perform kind acts in an unassuming type of way. Her father named her “Little Miss Tranquility… for she seemed to feel in a happy world of her own.
At one point in the book, Beth is stricken with an illness and Jo becomes her nursemaid. As Jo tends to Beth, she begins to “learn to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth’s nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth’s unselfish ambition to live for others.” Jo cries over Beth’s pure heart, which was filled only with one simple desire: to help out the people around her.
As I become more involved with the story, I decided to get up and move to a quieter area of the park. With a half-read copy of Little Women in my hands, I scouted out Central Park for the perfect place to sit. Passing some picnic tables, a large lawn, and a baseball field, I finally arrived at a perfect spot. There was a pink flowering tree just across from a bench hidden in the shrubbery. As I went to sit down, I spied the silver plaque nailed to the back of the bench. It read, “In memory of Dorothy Thompson, the very gentlest of human beings, her favorite place.”
“The very gentlest of human beings.” Those words rang in my head, and I thought about Beth and how special is her sweetness. The words made m think about how important, yet overlooked, her character traits are in our current American society.
I thought about the recent release of Divergent, a movie that glorifies the heroine’s choice of a dramatic and bold life of dauntlessness, risk-taking, and violence over the quiet life of self-abnegation, of charity, and of gentleness, and about how well it reflected the new ideal of American culture. A world where people care more about looks than about substance will continually hold to esteem people who are loud, charismatic, and outgoing, and undervalue the quieter Beth-like character of serenity and sweetness. By trying to embrace ambition, we have sacrificed gentleness.
How special is a character who lives only to serve others and does so quietly and lovingly. How wonderful is a person who, though they don’t speak very often, when they do speak, they speak with kindness and respect. How important is such a person, who continues to be a beacon of light into the world, even though they are often neither honored nor noticed. These are the type characters the media should promote and these are the types of people we should aspire to be. People who bring light and happiness to those around them, who don’t harm, but heal, who touch this world gently, but powerfully.