“Your mind is the rudest person you know,” said my yoga instructor.
She was right, of course.
If we spoke to our children the way we speak to ourselves, they would call CPS.
Immediately.
We criticize.
We blame.
We judge.
We flagellate.
We excoriate.
We inflict mortal wounds.
And then, in the cruelest blow of all: after delivering platters of demeaning insults, our minds ask, “Why aren’t I happy?”
But Kindness; Kindness is a fulcrum upon which a life can turn.
It is an act of desperation – the path taken when all of our paths dead end,
A secret choice made in the darkest moment.
Kindness says:
“None of that matters.
Not the failures, the shame, the humiliations, the mistakes, the falls, the awkward words,
the miscalculated sums – even the egregious sins.”
Kindness says:
“Be gentle – your heart is raw and red and bleeding. Treat it with infinite tenderness.”
At first, mind revolts. “Kindness?” it stammers incredulously.
“Kindness? No! Impossible! With kindness, you’ll stay a failure.”
Mind leaps up and stomps out of the room.
But, if whispered again and again and again,
Kindness sneaks into the smallest cracks in the crazed surface of our hearts.
It plants its seeds and takes root in the slightest fissures.
Slowly, slowly mind softens until it is won over through sheer force . . . of Kindness!
In the darkest moment, in the middle of the night,
When fear rises up and threatens to break the ground beneath your feet.
In that moment, whisper kindness
And eventually . . . eventually . . . mind will nod her head in sweet assent.
David Hanig 