KINDNESS Archives - Creative Transformation

December 9th

Thinking of Others

Today I am late writing because I have been thinking of others. Tomorrow I am hosting an English advent day of making Christmas Wreaths and decorating the Christmas tree for some of my foreign alumni. So I have been scouring the shops for all I need. Certainly thinking of others is a really good way to avoid falling into an advent funk! There are almost always others who have less than we do, or have more reason to suffer.

This poem about #kindness resonated with me today:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

– Naomi Shihab Nye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Shihab_Nye

Until I looked her up to include this link, I hadn’t realised that her father was Palestinian. It seems especially pertinent and poignant to include it under the circumstances….

To connect with me, look here: https://creativetransformation.org.uk/contact-me-2/

An unusually early start to my day allowed time for reflection, and I wanted to share this journal entry from last summer. It reminds me of the ebb and flow of life, and how despair can turn to joy. I am so happy to be able to report that practising the strategies I refer to in this journal has allowed meaningful and helpful change in my way of thinking and being, which in turn has opened wonderful new connections, work opportunities and ways of dealing with conflict! I am reminded of a card I bought 10 years ago when I was finding my life particularly difficult:

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP!

MINDFULNESS COURSE JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 2018

What matters to me?
To connect to beauty, kindness and love. To be able to be meaningfully with myself and others without judgement and constant criticism. To know joy viscerally and find a community and sense of belonging, which is not possible without the above. To be able to fully support my daughter, Which is also not possible without the above. To have meaning and purpose. To help others. To nourish myself and others without depleting the world and its resources. To create. Art and words and something lasting. To leave an imprint on the world of something that brings joy and peace and meaning to others. To be able to handle conflict in such a way that allows me to be intimate with at least one other human being, and to be connected to many others. To allow myself to be fully myself and fully human so that I can allow others to be the same. To live from the heart and courage and not from fear.

What drew me to this work?

The knowledge that my inner critic is so powerful and keeps on destroying my ability to pause, to be present, to be kind and loving to myself and others. Understanding that I need a daily practice to help me change this long term.

Reflections

I see clearly how my own thoughts shape and determine my life. I see how, without anything changing externally, what I tell myself about myself or my life or my worth or my relationships with others sets the tone for my day, my week, my life.

I see clearly that when I judge and criticise, I effectively paralyse myself, I throw a black blanket over my inner light, I create a self fulfilling prophecy of misery and worthlessness. I become someone nobody wants to spend time with, least of all me, who is stuck with myself, and can only get away by numbing, avoiding, sleep, tv, games or smoking. And I see how this can become a perpetuating cycle.

I understand how difficult it is to press the pause button. After all, that is one of the basic tenets of Alexander Technique and I managed to avoid it entirely for all my three year training and beyond, and now I know about it, but spend huge quantities of time without actually pressing it. And I know and see clearly that the first step is awareness and the second step is to press pause, and without that step, my life continues to hurtle along the trajectory of habitual pattern that is seemingly locked into my system.

I also see and have practical experience of how using that pause button can allow real and practical change – can alter the trajectory of my direction and life.

And it has taken me all summer of internal wrestling and wrangling, despite the best efforts of friends to remind me that it is not the way, to arrive at this Sunday morning prepared to stop and pause. It has taken terror, and hopelessness and despair and frustration and listlessness and overwhelm for me to arrive at this place.

But I am here, and I am grateful. And I commit to coming back to this place each day to practise pausing and connecting……