A sneeze attack this morning that made me giggle and my little dog bark and dance around me. When the attack subsided I pondered the silence. Why does someone say "Bless you" when you sneeze? Is it the age old belief that you almost die, a prayer to keep evil spirits away? No one answer or superstition has been confirmed, but we do, instinctively a blessing for the other pops out.
Closing my eyes, with a smile I whispered "Bless you." In the pause between the blessing to myself and my giggle, I wondered why we wait until that superstitious moment to bless another. I flashed back to my first experience on the Boston subways as a teen and the 13 years commuting during rush hour in California ("rush" hour is the epitome of a misnomer). The sea of faces not looking at each other. I thought of the 22% of children living in US poverty, 1 in 4 women live in domestic violence as do over 3 million children. So many statistics, numbers and unseen people behind the numbers, just like commuters they pass by us unseen. And I wondered if the world would change if at that moment, 2 billion of the 4 billion people on earth sneezed and the other 2 billion said "Bless you."
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