Kindness
"Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”
Maya Angelou
You are kind. I see and understand your kindness. Some people are motivated to be kind because of their religion. Some people are motivated to be kind because it gives them a sense of worth and purpose. I believe we’re kind because it’s just part of who we are, it’s embedded in us.
There are those who say kindness is naive, ineffective; makes one weak. Yet, I believe, it’s my kindness that is the foundation of my strength. Kindness does not equate with passivity, frailty or timidness; I am kind AND a fairly tough nut. :) No one rolls over me, like a compactor pressing asphalt into a road.
Jungian analyst, Robert A. Johnson, said, ‘If you can touch your shadow, and do something out of the ordinary pattern, a great deal of energy will flow from it.’
Shadows often give rise to rage, doubt, the need to control, fear, resistance, frustration, judgment, and resentment. These are all reasonable responses to emotional, physical, and societal triggers.
But, if I can touch my shadow, by sitting alongside it, by being curious as to what it would like to say to me, then I have opened space around a pattern. Then, for me, out of this bit of space, compassion for this particular shadow arises from within me. I have, for this particular moment, shifted a pattern; a single shift in patterning verifies, for me, that such change is possible and fruitful, even at this stage of my life.
From this process, a great deal of kindness energy emerges. It feels warm and loving inside; kindness turned inward onto me.
Having an abundance of shadows is helpful in giving me lots of practice with this “do something out of the ordinary pattern”. :)
Humor can be defined as the comical aspect. Maya Angelou recognized the power of kindness and humor. Humor, even dark humor, gives us light heartedness, perspective, and healing laughter. Kindness and humor - what a lovely, effective combo!
Naomi Shihab Nye, in her poem entitled, Kindness, speaks tenderly of the origins and ways of kindness. I love this poem; its rawness and grace lift me up.
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 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
"Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”
Maya Angelou