Tag: kindness

Some Things Can’t Be Dropped

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“If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.” – Mark Nepo

The year after I’d summitted Mt. Rainier for the first time with a guided group, my friends and I put together a team of four of us to make an attempt on our own without a guide. We left on a Friday afternoon, climbed three and a half hours to ascend about 3,500 feet in altitude and started to make our camp.

It was dark by this time and as we hurried around with our headlamps on, I went to pull the tent poles I was carrying out of my pack. One of the poles slipped from my hand and started to slide down the mountain. Panicked by my mistake, I leapt forward and fell on it before it could disappear out of the spotlight of my headlamp.

I was thinking about that pole as I hurried around making Christmas plans yesterday. In a season where it seems like there are a hundred things to do, some things can’t be dropped.

The slipperiest sometimes is the whole point in all we are celebrating. In my family, we celebrate the birth of Jesus and the promise that love, light and kindness spread generously can make a difference in this world. As we celebrate the delight of this year, we also recognize that there are many ways we can do it better next year.

On that climb twenty years ago, fortunately I caught that tent pole because without it, there wasn’t going to be a tent. At 9,000 feet of altitude on a dark night with a whole lot of mountain to search, we weren’t going to find it if it slipped out of sight. But with it, we went on to climb and summit the mountain safely with a warm, dry tent as our base.

I keep coming back to that story as a way to keep me centered this Christmas season. With the point of all we are celebrating in the spotlight, it gives us a solid base from which to attempt everything else we are doing.

In Feeling

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“The problem with this world is that we draw our family circle too small.” – Mother Teresa

Here’s the way sickness travels in my family. One kid gets sick, the other one gets it and then finally I get sick. Fortunately, I don’t always get sick but if I do, I’ll be last to get it. And when I do, I learn how brave my kids have been.

This time it was my daughter who got a stomach bug first last weekend. She spit up a few times and then said, “Wow, I’ve never thrown up 4 times in a day before. When are we going to go hiking?” I replied that I thought she might want to rest given that she didn’t feel well. She exclaimed she felt fine so we went.

Then my son got it mid-week. It was very clear because I opened his door to get him out of his crib in the morning, and instantly got hit with the smell. “I sneezed it out!” he exclaimed, not all that upset. He stayed home from school but he too said he felt “good” and was pretty peppy playing around all day.

I thought I’d avoided getting it too until this weekend when my body, probably exhausted from all the cleaning, just gave up and succumbed. I wondered how the heck my kids were so delightful when their bodies were fighting this bug. It always looks easier when someone else is doing it, doesn’t it? As usually happens with getting sick, it comes with a huge heap of humility and admiration too.

This made me think of the words sympathy and empathy. Sympathy from the Greek of sun (with) + pathos (feeling). Oxford languages defines sympathy understanding between people, common feeling.  

Empathy, a word I hear so often these days in conjunction with raising emotionally intelligent kids, is from the Greek of em (in) + pathos (feeling). It is defined by Oxford languages as the ability to understand the feelings of another.

In my little family we have so many opportunities to have sympathy for each other because we share so much context at this stage – the people we know, the many hours we spend all together, the illnesses we pass along. It may be the easiest time for us to all stand in common feeling. And if we get that right, at least some of the time, it helps us become more empathetic toward others because we have the family experience of feeling understood.

The other thing I was reminded of as the illness ran its course is how much energy I spend resisting being sick. I didn’t want to throw up and I managed not to. But in hindsight, it may have made it last longer overall. Sometimes we just have to let the bad out so that the healing can begin, a lesson I keep having to repeat.

It’s funny as I type this thinking of my gratitude towards this stomach bug. It created a shared family experience, reminded me that resistance to uncomfortable things is often a harder route to go and most of all, makes me so thankful that we all feel well again. If only there was a virus that could unite our bigger human family….

(featured image photo from Pexels)

Feedback Loops

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“Life is an echo. What you send out — comes back.” – unknown

My son and I were reading before bedtime. He climbed up on my bed with the pile of board books, snuggled in and then said, “Come up.” After I did, he said with a clap, “Good boy, Mama!”

When I put my daughter to bed, after we say our prayers and I snuggle her up so only her little face is showing above the comforter, I say “Good night, beautiful girl.” And she replies “Good night, beautiful mama.”

I studied feedback and control systems in college when getting my Electrical Engineering degree. But nothing has been more effective and more immediate than parenting in reminding me that life is an echo. My kids show me every day that what I send out comes right back to me, usually in the same tone.

Sibling Supportiveness

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“There’s a sun in every person – the you we call companion.” – Rumi

My kids and I were sitting on my bed reading books before bed and my 6-year-old daughter leaned over and kissed my toddler on the head and said, “Love you, Baby.” He said, “No kiss, La-la.” And so I kissed him on the head and he said, “No kiss, Mama.” But he was smiling so we kept kissing him and he kept saying “no kiss” and laughing.

My kids have such a sweet relationship. When they are in the car and my toddler hears a siren or other noise that scares him, he’ll say, “cared”, my daughter will say, “Want to hold my hand?” and he does.

I work hard to make this happen. I sit with them as they work things out and act as interpreter. I also narrate why he mimics her so much because he thinks she’s the coolest thing ever. I do this because I grew up as the younger sibling of someone who hated me. She was four years older than me which is the same age difference as my two kids. When we’ve talked about it as adults she said, “I don’t know why I was so mean to you.”

My opinion is that my sister has always struggled with feeling like she didn’t belong in our family because she was the one “realist” amongst a pack of optimists. I came along and the easy, happy disposition I was born with challenged her fighter, questioning nature and it is her makeup to push back.

Whatever my sister’s reason was, I find it fascinating to think about the dynamic now. Having kids that are the same age difference has been fear-inducing and healing for me. I was terrified that the same pattern would repeat itself. And now I’m starting to trust that there isn’t any scary truth that four years difference makes siblings not like each other.

There isn’t a more influential factor on my parenting style than the wounds of my childhood. I was scared to live with my sister – scared that anything I professed to love she would destroy. If I had long hair, I was scared she’d cut it off at night, if I liked a particular stuffed animal, I was scared she’d take it or destroy it. To be fair, I don’t think she ever did – but she threatened a lot. And I think I’m still scared of admitting I love something in case that means it’s taken away.

My mom was tired of kid squabbles by the time I came along as the third child. She was ready to move on with her own professional and personal development and given how talented and smart she is, that was only natural. But it meant that telling her my fears or about the conflict was not a fruitful path. She’d call it tattling or say we both caused it, no matter what happened. There was no path to resolution for me as a child – no understanding, no naming it and no way out of fear.

So every day I work at building trust between my kids and making sure they are source of comfort, not anxiety for each other. It heals me alongside helping them. It’s another reminder to me that nothing is wasted in this life – every wound can become a source of knowledge and inspiration. I hope that long after I’m gone, when they are scared, they will still talk to each other about it and hold hands.

Difficult Compassion

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“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” – Mother Teresa

Recently my kids and I have had a couple of encounters with apparently homeless people that along with the proliferation of tents in the parks that came with COVID have my almost 6-year-old daughter asking a lot of questions. In one encounter, a man with a belt still tying off his arm for shooting up was hollering and trying to take off his pants and another man was threatening him with a baseball bat to emphasize that he should keep his pants on. In another, a man was crawling down the busy street near where we live with a look of sheer agony on his face and one arm outstretched.

I often am confused about how to talk with my daughter about these matters. She may only be going in to first grade but she talks like she is a 9-year-old, is very observant and asks a lot of good questions. To top it off, the homeless problem is so apparent and pervasive that I certainly don’t have any great ideas about how we are going to fix it. But we came up with an idea that she could draw something and we could make some care packages for people that we see.

Yesterday she wrote this note without any help from me:

We nowe you are homeless but we care. Sorry you are homles.

Do not smoc. Do not take drugs becus they make you feel bedder for a few minets but wen it goes a way it makes you feel wurs.

My daughter – age 5.9 years

She then started taping on extra pieces of paper so that she could continue. In addition to being fascinated about what content she’s taken in from our many discussions, I noticed how hard it is to stay in empathy before moving to advice or judgment.

The other day my friend, Doug, asked if I could remember the name of a guy we used to work with. He said something like, “You know, the guy who’s wife left him, house burned down and his dog died?” “Oh my goodness,” that’s terrible I thought and still had no idea who he was talking about. But it wasn’t long before the thought crossed my mind that this poor man really must have pissed off God.

So I know first-hand how hard it is to stay in empathy. I start moving to judgment or advice because it feels like having an explanation of why bad things happen makes me feel safer that they won’t happen to me. Understanding that tendency has helped me practice a better kind of compassion, one that tries not to presume to know the journey another person has walked but is willing to help. It haven’t gotten any less confused about how to talk about these huge problems with my kids but I think it has helped me to have more open-ended conversations with them where we can recognize the humanity of others and be curious about how we can help.

In that spirit, my daughter and I settled on just drawing hearts that say “we care” on the back. I don’t think they will solve homelessness but I do hope that they bring a moment of being seen.

Five Pieces of Writing that Inspired Me: #5 Showing Up

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“He is able who thinks he is able.” – Buddha

Sometimes the problems of the world seem overwhelming so that I feel anything that I could do wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Then I think of this story that Frederick Buechner told as part of a sermon he delivered and I remember that we just have to show up.

The Best She Could

In any case, it was this same George Shinn who in 1880, five years before being asked to start your church here in Chestnut Hill, was summoned once at midnight to the bedside of an old woman who lived by herself without much in the way of either money or friends and was dying. She managed to convey that she wanted some other woman to come stay with her for such time as she might have left, so George Shinn and the old woman’s doctor struck out in the darkness to try to dig up one for her. It sounds like a parable the way it is told, and I am inclined to believe that if someone were ever to tell the story of your lives and mine, they also would sound more like parables than we ordinarily suppose. They knocked at doors and threw pebbles at second story windows. One woman said she couldn’t come because she had children. Another said she simply wouldn’t know what to do, what to be, in a crisis like that. Another was suspicious of two men prowling around at that hour of night and wouldn’t even talk to them. But finally, as the memoir of Dr. Shinn puts it in the prose of another age, “The rapped at the humble door of an Irish woman, the mother of a brood of children. She put her head out of the window, ‘Who’s there?’ she said ‘and what can you want at this time of night?’ They tell her the situation. Her warm, Irish heart cannot resist. ‘Will you come’ ‘Sure and I’ll come, and I’ll do the best I can.’ “And she did come,” the accounts ends, “She did the best she could.”

Listening to Your Life – Frederick Buechner

Five Pieces of Writing that Inspired Me: #4 Leaving a Mark

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“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” – Dalai Lama

This meditation from Mark Nepo made me think about how we touch the people we are closest to all the time. Even if not physically, our presence and especially our words shape everyone around us. Whenever I think of how we rub off on each other with every encounter, this meditation is what I’ve come to see in my head.

The Work of Love

“Love courses through everything.” – Fakhruddin Iraqi

I recently learned that the first form of pencil was a ball of lead. Having discovered the lead, if scratched, would leave markings, people then wrestled with chunks of the stuff in an attempt to write. Through the work of many, the chunks were eventually shaped into a useable form that could fit the hand. The discovery became a tool.

I am humbled to confess after a lifetime of relationship that love is no different. Be it a lover or a friend or a family member, the discovery of closeness appears in our life like a ball of lead – something that if wrestled with, will leave markings by which we can understand each other.

But this is only the beginning. The work of love is to shape the stuff of relationship into a tool that fits our hands. With each hardship faced, with each illusion confronted, with each trespass looked at and owned, another piece of the chunk is whittled and love begins to become a sacred tool.

When truth is held in compassionate hands, the sharpness of love becomes clear and not hurtful.

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

Gratitude Journal

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“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

I woke up early this morning and sat down to meditate as I do every morning. When I sit on the cushion, usually what I’ve been worrying about, sweating the details of or puzzling over comes up. So I spend the next few minutes leaning in to whatever it is that’s got me by the throat and trying to make friends with it. If I’m lucky, I get a few moments of that stillness that feeds my soul somewhere in the process.

However, this morning nothing rushed towards me. My family is doing fine. There are plenty of things I could and probably will worry about sometime but at this moment, none are pressing. I am full – of rest and love and faith that all will be okay. Wow wow wow!

So here’s my list of things I’m grateful for to mark this spectacular moment:

A parent that I never met created a fund for the teachers who are ran a camp for our kids this week. While the teachers were with our kids, someone smashed the windows of their cars and took backpacks and coats. I’m grateful that in response to that unkindness, someone did the work to unite us in kindness and care as a community to help pay for the repairs.

My daughter and I rode our bikes to a local donut shop and instead of bringing my wallet, I just brought a $20 bill. Turns out that they stopped accepting cash as part of COVID and so when we went pay after we’d ordered, I didn’t have a way to do so. A dad with his kids outside saw this happen and went in and got the order they’d restocked after we’d turned away. When I tried to give him my cash, he said, “I don’t take cash either.” I’m grateful we rode away from there with food in our bellies and the warmth of strangers in our hearts.

When I wondered to myself this week about whether I’m doing the work I should be and specifically whether I should spend time writing, I received two comments that helped me know that I’m heard and valued. I’m grateful that the mysterious process of asking for what I need from the Universe worked to keep my head in the game so that my heart can speak.

My daughter made a sign that said, “Yor the best mom.” While I appreciate the words, I’m most grateful that she learned to read and write in a year where she mostly had online Kindergarten. I’m grateful that she is learning the immense value of words to reach other people and to share what I love, which is to read and understand someone else’s experience.

My 82-year-old mother golfed with some new friends in a tournament about an hour from where she lives. I’m so grateful that she is so healthy, resourceful and energetic as to be able to find all sorts of ways to enjoy life at every age.

One evening this week I was watering plants with my son and he ended up soaked. I laid out a blanket on the ground with a couple of pillows and after I covered him with a towel, we laid there together and looked up at the dazzling evening blue sky. I’m grateful that even without too many words, we can look at the same beautiful view, point, laugh and know that we belong to each other.

I’ve listened and read so much great content lately (many mentioned in this post) that seems to be converging on the wisdom to give up perfectionism and celebrate being the messy, imperfect and authentic person I am. I’m so grateful that I woke up this morning and that for today, I feel like I am enough.

Co-Creators

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“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” – Dalai Lama

Listening to a podcast with Tara Brach and Dr. Kristin Neff about fierce self-compassion, Kristin told a story about a man she worked closely with and once supported who turned out to be a narcissist and sexually abusive to young women. She said something like, “Until this happened, I had no idea how many narcissists were around but so many people I’ve talked to have a story about one.” And sure enough, what popped into my head was the narcissist that once was in my life. I worked with him and he was once good friends with my ex-husband. Because our relationship was tangential, I’ve largely dismissed any effect that he had on me but I realized as I listened that there are so many unkind things he said about women that pop into my head more than they should. Like the time he said a particular woman was like butter. And I naively asked what? “She’d be totally hot but-her face.”  That I remember that probably a dozen years or more since it was said, goes to show how powerful words can be.

Later on in the podcast Dr. Neff, an assistant professor of research at University of Texas, talked about the idea that we are co-creators of our lives. The people around us influence who we are. That makes me so grateful that I spend most of my time with my kids who are joy monsters. And it also explains why they affect me so deeply – not only because my observations of them resonate with my own experience in such a lived way that I learn great lessons but also because they are changing me as part of my ongoing story.

It also calls me to really intentional about what I let in. As I was listening to the podcast, remembering about the narcissist who used to be in my life and the things he said, my eyes caught a picture of my wise and kind dad. In great contrast to the narcissist, my dad would have never said those unkind or demeaning things about women. I had this perfect a-ha moment when I knew I’d let a narcissist affect my assumptions about how men thought of women in general and that was a great deal more influence than I should have ever given him. If our lives are co-created with other people, I want to make sure to draw my conclusions from those around me that I admire, respect and inspire me and to edit out the rest.

Three Things

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“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” – Buddha

I’m a sucker for things are written in wood, anything that advises to be kind and advice that comes in three. So I couldn’t help but notice this sign when we’re stayed at a beach footage this weekend.

It made me think about what my three instructions would be. Be curious. Be vulnerable. Be kind.

But I keep wanting to add on with things like never stop trying and it’s going to be great, kid! Which is why I never write in wood.