Awareness

Kindness Is Hard. Also, Kindness Is Easy

July 01, 2016

Photo courtesy Valentin Sabau

It seems like it should be simple to be kind. After all, to be kind, we don’t have to perform extraordinary acts, give away large sums of money, or make huge sacrifices. Kindness is a much cozier, more approachable concept, as simple as offering a smile, a few genuine words of compassion, or a listening ear.

Why does that feel so hard sometimes?

I’ve been thinking about kindness a lot since I wrote the post here. Actively attempting to perform acts of kindness, rather than waiting for an opportunity to present itself has proven to be more challenging than I expected, even though kindness has always been a value important to me. Many questions and decisions arise. How to be kind? Who needs kindness? What will be the best thing to do for them? What about the man on the corner holding up the sign? What about the emails in my inbox wanting money for good causes, causes I believe in? What if someone takes advantage of me? This is a good chance to give up the illusion of control. I can’t know what’s in another’s heart, whether they’re taking advantage of me or not. I can know what’s in my heart.

I still have a lot to learn, but here are a few conclusions I’ve drawn after two weeks of deliberately trying to practice kindness:

Become aware. Maybe this is for me alone, but I tend to walk around in my own little world, consumed by my thoughts and imaginings. I’m sure I miss opportunities to be kind simply because I’m oblivious. I’m making more of an effort to pay attention to what’s happening around me, actively seeking ways to be kind, listening more closely to friends and family. What you notice multiplies—noticing opportunities to be kind has opened my eyes to more opportunities.

Start small and close. Be kind to your loved ones. Think about what you do for your family as kind actions, not requirements. There are a few chores around my home that I truly dislike (and sometimes resent). When I think about them as kind actions for people I love, I’m much less irritated by them (the chores and the people). Also think about what acts of kindness come easily to you—maybe you love baking and sharing your creations with others, or you’re great at finding exactly the right words of encouragement. Start there.

Use your words. Phrases as simple as please, thank you, can I help? might be just what someone needs to hear. Consider your tone of voice, too. How many arguments start over tone of voice rather than words themselves?

Fill your well. It’s hard to be kind to others when you’re unkind to yourself. Meet your needs for rest, nourishment (physical, mental, and spiritual), pleasure, and adventure. Don’t be stingy with yourself so that you have something to draw from to be kind to others.

Follow your heart. When you have a kind impulse, follow it. When faced with a choice, ask, “What would be the kind thing to do?”

Retain your boundaries. Being kind doesn’t mean being a doormat. Kindness is not “niceness,” bending your desires to suit someone else’s agenda.

Kindness sometimes feels awkward and scary. Putting yourself out there makes you feel vulnerable, offering a gift that might be rejected or misunderstood. It’s a risk you’ll have to take if you value kindness and want to bring more of it into your life. Start small, and see where it takes you.

How can you be kind today?

Angelo Giambra

The Water Carriers

June 29, 2016

Photo courtesy James DeMers

Introduction by Ted Kooser: How I love poems in which there is evidence of a poet paying close attention to the world about him. Here Angelo Giambra, who lives in Florida, has been keeping an eye on the bees.

The Water Carriers

On hot days we would see them
leaving the hive in swarms. June and I
would watch them weave their way
through the sugarberry trees toward the pond
where they would stop to take a drink,
then buzz their way back, plump and full of water,
to drop it on the backs of the fanning bees.
If you listened you could hear them, their tiny wings
beating in unison as they cooled down the hive.
My brother caught one once, its bulbous body
bursting with water, beating itself against
the smooth glass wall of the canning jar.
He lit a match, dropped it in, but nothing
happened. The match went out and the bee
swam through the mix of sulfur and smoke
until my brother let it out. It flew straight
back to the hive. Later, we skinny-dipped
in the pond, the three of us, the August sun
melting the world around us as if it were
wax. In the cool of the evening, we walked
home, pond water still dripping from our skin,
glistening and twinkling like starlight.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Angelo Giambra, whose most recent book of poetry is “Oranges and Eggs,” Finishing Line Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from the “South Dakota Review,” Vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 2009, by permission of Angelo Giambra and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Achievement

Summer Rerun: Just Call Me a Tortoise

June 24, 2016


Welcome to summer reruns! About once a month, I’ll be sharing a post from the archives. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2011.


“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”—Confucius

I like to apply lessons I’ve learned working with Tank and taking riding lessons to other areas of my life. One lesson I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is “It takes the time it takes,” and the corollary, “go slower to go faster.”

I’m not particularly patient. I want to get things done, and I want them done Right Now. However, especially with a horse, I’ve learned that some things absolutely cannot be rushed. They take the time they take, and you’ll be much less frustrated, not to mention safer, if you relax—and sometimes throw out entirely—your expectations. For me, when I’m learning something new (or teaching Tank something new), things go better when I take baby steps. Sometimes to my embarrassment, I’ve become the poster child for baby steps at my barn as my trainer often uses me as an example of someone who takes things slowly. I am not naturally athletic, and frankly, I’m also a big chicken, so yes, I do take things slowly. When I take a step forward too quickly, I often end up taking two steps back. What works for me in riding is breaking down every new skill into small parts, then practicing those parts until I feel completely comfortable with them. Then I can move on.

Baby steps work great for other pursuits, too: cleaning and reorganizing the house, learning to draw and paint, changing diet and exercise habits and so on. The beauty of baby steps is that if each small step is solid, you’ll find yourself making steady progress. You’ll be less likely to stagger forward then backward in fits and starts. In this way, you will go slower to go faster.

Of course, this is what works for me. Each person has his or her own best method for personal growth—my baby steps may drive some people absolutely mad with frustration. This is where you must listen to your heart for direction. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa, so please ignore this advice if you’re more like a hare than a tortoise. Few things make me crazier than to have someone tell me my way is wrong and I should do things differently!

Sometimes I get frustrated, and wish I could progress a bit faster than I do and I have to remind myself that it takes the time it takes. Overall, this slow and steady method works for me. It works for Tank, who gets anxious when he’s not sure what he’s being asked to do. We plod along, tortoise-like, but we’re going forward. And that’s what matters.

Balance

Motion and Rest

June 22, 2016

Photo courtesy Tim Marshall

“How desirable is a proper balance between motion and rest, and how difficult it is at times for us to achieve it. Alternation lies everywhere in nature. Even cows and chickens take time off from producing milk and eggs. Only we human beings foolishly forget these solid well-known truths at times and try to live our lives from crest of wave to crest of wave with never a trough between. We forget that in the trough the next crest builds.”
—Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year

Compassion

Turning Pain Into Compassion

June 17, 2016

Image courtesy Laure Ferlita

It’s been nearly a week since the unthinkable events at Pulse in Orlando, just an hour and a half from where I live. It feels pointless to write about happiness—let alone simple pleasures and everyday adventures—when we face one unthinkable tragedy after another—shootings, natural disasters, armed conflict, suffering on a scale we can’t imagine and feel helpless to alleviate.

No one is a stranger to suffering. Just as we are united in our desire to live happy lives, we are also united in suffering. Each one of us hides some kind of wound inside. We all know how it feels to hurt, feel helpless, rage against the universe, or try to find meaning in the face of senselessness. We should not turn suffering and pain into anger and hate, though that sometimes feels impossible. What should we do instead?

 “You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch you and you turn it into compassion.”* 

In the aftermath of the Pulse shooting, people and organizations are turning pain into compassion. For example:

The Tampa Bay Rays have dedicated tonight’s game to the victims of the Orlando shooting, and are donating the proceeds to the Pulse Victims Fund. The game sold out (something that doesn’t often happen). 

The Go Fund Me account for the victims set a record, collecting more than 4 million dollars. 

And more personally and poignantly, here’s Laure Ferlita’s way of coping. She wrote: “Here's my idea—I intend to pay kindness forward 49 times for each of the lives lost. Then I'll pay kindness forward 53 more times for each of those injured. That's 102 acts of kindness paid—deliberately—into a world that seems to have tilted ever so slightly off its axis.” (Click here to read the entire post. Click here if you’d like learn the names of those who lost their lives.) 

Yes, there is evil in this world. But there is also good. There is kindness and love, and we can decide to be on the side of kindness and love by our words and our actions. Decide to turn pain into compassion. Decide.

*The sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, quoted in When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron.