I hope you find it some day, whatever it is

And just like that, I've got a new favorite shirt.

We were dining at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Just enjoying some dolmas, hummus, tabouli, baba ganoush, all the delicious fixin's.

Then I caught a glimpse of it: my new favorite shirt.

What a kind message to broadcast to the world

"I hope you find it some day, whatever it is."

It stopped me in my tracks. I gazed at it, stupefied. Rice and grape leaves half hanging out of my gaping, suspended maw.

It was the kindest shirt I'd seen in so long. It was ... it was beautiful.

In fact, it had been forever since I'd even considered the possibility of wearing kindness like this.

You see so many kinds of shirts out there. Plain shirts, shirts with patterns, shirts that show off your favorite company, shirts with jokes on them, functional shirts for fitness, shirts to signal you're upstanding or wealthy, shirts to signal that you're in the "cool crowd," and on and on.

But a shirt dedicated to kindness? Simple, concise, clear and cutting as a crystal in its intention, deep and dense as an ocean in its meaning, yet tender and sweet as a summer meadow's breeze?

It's funny we don't have more of these kinds of shirts. I get it: lots of people think they're cheesy, mushy, naive even. Many turn away from this kind of message reflexively, like they would the sloppy tongue of a slobbery Great Dane headed straight for their mouth.

Which makes this all the more a treat. The kindest, most empathetic shirt I'd seen in a long time. A personalized offering of love and support.

An invitation to all the seekers, the ones will keep searching till they've got nothing left, who refuse to dissolve into the half-dead oblivion of comfortable satisfaction with life.

A kind, firm, loving exhortation in a shirt. Like the best coaches and teachers, offering love and support while challenging you to become more than you are today.

I'm gonna go look for a shirt like this now. In the meantime, keep searching dear friends. I'll be over here searching with you.