I wrote the other day about a  revelation I had. Living in our new and impersonal and sometimes disconnected world is in itself a spiritual experience, it challenges us to be grounded, patient and compassionate.

I sometimes fail at this, but more and more, am learning how to succeed. In the most selfish of terms, it has been very good for me. And good, I think, for others.

Yesterday, after sitting up for hours with my head spinning, I took my revelation to the next level.

I went to the Cambridge Garden Florist Shop and asked Linda to make me two baskets of flowers. I brought one to the health center where I had a routine check-up scheduled, I have often seen these staffers and nurses struggle with angry and frustrated people, arrogant and greedy insurance companies, government bureaucrats and mountains of red tape, paperwork and insane regulations.

“Who else can I yell at?,” I once heard a frustrated father say to a nurse after he couldn’t get insurance approval for his son’s medicine, “I can’t reach anyone else but you.” I am not surprised by the anger bubbling up in the political system, it was like a dam ready to burst.

After my visit to the doctor, I was scheduled to go to the pharmacy, where the techs and pharmacists had been working for weeks to straighten out a health system morass that was keeping me from some medicine I was supposed to have. I got some flowers  for them as well. I imagined the fear and fury I would feel if I were seriously or terminally ill and had to wait this long. And it happens all the time.

I brought the first batch of flowers to the health center. I handed them to the receptionists. She was stunned, slack-jawed. “What are these?,” she asked. “Did someone die?”

No, I said, I just wanted to acknowledge in some way that you all are in the middle of a system that is difficult and frustrating, and you are the cannon fodder, the people in the middle that they put out there to take the heat and the blame.”

She teared up a bit, and seemed in shock. She really wasn’t sure what to say. I think she wanted to make sure I didn’t want something.

“I’ve been here a long time,” she said, “and nobody has ever done this.” It’s about time, I said.

Then, after my appointment – a half-dozen people came up to me in shock to thank me for the flowers. I could see what it meant to them – I went to my Rite-Aid and gave the second vase to the techs and the pharmacist there, the ones who had been on the phone for hours trying to figure out why the insurance wasn’t working or recognizing me. They even called the government and reached them, a heroic act.

So my revelation continued. We live in an increasingly corporate system, as you know, where the people in the middle help bureaucrats and CEO’s and bankers and giant corporations who increasingly control our lives and profit from us, but hide from the very obvious fact that they care little for us and want nothing to do with us face to face. They do seek our money and our votes.

And the put the people in the middle out front to take the heat for what they do. It is easy enough to get angry about it. It is wrong to abuse the people in the middle, it just another way of abusing ourselves.

I have great empathy for the people in the middle, I see people screaming at them every time I go to the health center or the pharmacy. Why is my co-pay higher? Why do I have to pay twice as much for the same medicine I got the last month for so much less? Why can’t I get the medicine my doctor says I want to have? Why does it take three days to re-fill a prescription? Why doesn’t my insurance card work? Why can’t my mother get her medicine?

“Sometimes,” one of the techs told me once, “I feel like everybody’s toilet bowl. I don’t make these decisions, I have no more power than they do. But nobody cares.” I’ve heard the nurses say the same thing many times. At the pharmacy, I saw a man scream at a young and very sweet tech because the cost of his medicine had gone up. I saw him in the parking lot.

As politely as I could, I asked him why he was yelling at her, surely he knew it wasn’t her fault. “Yeah, I do know,” he said, somewhat ruefully. “But I can’t afford to pay for the medicine my wife needs now and they cant even tell me why.  if I don’t scream at somebody I’ll go hang myself. I couldn’t get close to the people running the pharmaceutical company.”

But I see there is another way.

Another chance to find community in a fragmented world, to re-affirm our connection to one another in the Corporate Nation, where the Great Lie is this: everyone claims to care about us but nobody really does. We can try to care about each other. I’m not looking for sainthood, I relish the right to challenge people who hurt or betray me or lie to me. But the people in the middle are innocents, refugees floating in a sea of greed and cowardice.

Corporations are impersonal, they do not have consciences or compassion. Only people have those things.

I think I will make it a point to frequently visit with Linda when I enter these new and complex systems of the world, and see a human way to navigate through them. I can’t express the joy and pleasure I felt in the faces of the people getting this small, inexpensive and simple gift. It cost me pennies, it was a large gift.

I ought to say this:

People love getting flowers, but I also do realize – I admit that I was slow to grasp this – that flowers and recognition are not only good for the recipients but for the givers. For me. Selfishly, I see that this connection will help me as well as comfort them. Of course it helps to know the people you are dealing with. It helps when we get in trouble or are lost in red tape and confusion. It helps to be known. I see that. I suppose in many ways many good deeds are selfish, according to the Dalai Lama. We do it for us as well as them.

Imagine a world in which this became common, if the people in the middle got flowers every day, not once every decade. I think the world could change.

But it also feels good – healthy – to do good, it feels much better than being angry or resentful. Neurologists and cardiologists say it is health for the brain and the heart to be calm and show compassion, it prolongs the life of the body and the mind. This understanding has helped me profoundly to find love, be more creative, open up to friendship and intimacy.

Flowers are one good and safe way to help us navigate the new world.But there are many ways.

So are cookies and chocolate, note cards or even an affirmation of patience. Small gifts like cards or potholders, sketches and notes.

I have learned to say this often in my life, it always feels good, it is something of a mantra for me in our world: I know this isn’t your fault, I know this is what our world is like right now. Thanks for trying to help me, I appreciate it. It is powerful medicine, and spiritually powerful.

I have learned the hard way that succumbing to rage and frustration has harmed me more than anyone else. It has harmed a lot of other people as well. I can barely look at the raging politicians on the screens, they reflect the worst parts of me, of us.

In a polarized and exploited world, we have in our own heads and hearts the most powerful tools imaginable to keep our humanity and sense of community. Each other. Compassion and empathy are revolutionary in their own way.

I am learning to value that.  It is the spiritual path, right in front of us, every day.

The people in the middle are us, our daughters, sons, mothers and sisters and brothers. If we are often separated from one another by technology and the greed and inhumanity of big corporations and the smothering bureaucracy of government, we can find our spiritual and human footing simply by remembering what it means to be a human being.