Kindness

By Naomi Shihab, a Palestinian poet

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 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 send you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindess 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.

You and the Rest of the World

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass. And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired, we are scared, and denying it doesn’t change the truth. Sooner or later we have to set aside our denial and face the world, head on, guns blazing… Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt. It’s a freaking ocean. So how do you keep from drowning in it?

It’s all about lines. The finish line at the end of a race, waiting in line at the grocery store, and then there’s the most important line, the line separating you from others. You need boundaries, between you and the rest of the world. Other people are far too messy. It’s all about lines…drawing lines in the sand and praying like hell that no one crosses them. But someone almost always does.

However, at some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep people out, they fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So you can waste your life drawing lines or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross. Here’s what I know: If you’re willing to throw caution to the wind and take a chance, the view from the other side… is spectacular.

What is it you want most from life?

A rhetorical question.  One that we all ask ourselves if not consciously.  Many answer this question with something related to relationship/love, money, fame, or one form or another of material possessions.  And for some, this may be as far as the thought is capable of going since it is the truth.  There is no right or wrong answer.  I have found surprising insight after sitting with this question at various times throughout my life.  At times I have been blinded to my true wants due to fears and a vast number of societal influences.  I found that many times, instead of seeking what I want, I have instead sought what ‘others’ (society) have convinced me of what I want. 

Everyday we are constantly barraged with images and words which tell us that our life will be more complete, we will be happier with whatever is being pitched.  We need more:  softer skin, more hair, better sleep, this car, a bigger this or that…  All these THINGS bring a degree of happiness.  A degree of it.  Not it. For those looking  for something more fundamental, I will argue that no matter how many ‘things’ we now have, we need to  be looking in a much deeper place.  We have all heard that money does not buy happiness.  At the same time, I have never seen proof that poverty does either.  There must be something more.

This is a question we each have to answer for ourselves.  I have found that when I look beyond the standard answers, I’ve seen there is something else.  Something much more expansive.  Once you find your ‘answer,’ work to make it reality.

Just Enjoy Your Tea

When I’m rushed for time and can’t wait for water to boil, I will put a cup of water for my tea in the microwave.  I press a few buttons to set the time, hit start and voila!  hot water.  On a few occasions I have wondered how the energy waves interacted with the water to create heat.  Usually, I just accept that the microwave makes things hot.  

We rarely look at life this way.  Because we are human animals and have the ability to think and feel, we are constantly dissecting everything, looking for the reasons behind even the most trivial things.  (Why did they say that? What did they mean by that? WTF?)  We dissect and ponder, looking for the hidden meanings of things or in the words and actions of others.

On the emotional level, the human mind has trouble accepting things as they are.  We want life to conform to our needs.  We want others to change (yes, we do), making them more acceptable to they way we think they should be.

I’ve come to see that the answer (peace) does not lie in knowing WHY the world is as it is.  Peace comes from accepting that there are things we cannot change.  Really, really accepting this.  When I can bring myself back to this, I am led directly to the present moment, the only time I have full control over who I am.  In this moment, I can decide how to look at things, how to react, and whether to be compassionate to myself and others.

We are only here for a short ride/run.  Acceptance is key. As is forgiveness.  I make the most of the present moment as this is where my life is right now.  

I choose not to fret over what made the water hot.  I just enjoy my tea.

Say When

There’s something to be said about a glass half full, about knowing when to say when. We don’t say when because there’s something about the possibility–of more. More love, more wine, more anything. More is better. I think it’s more of a floating line, a barometer of need. Of desire. And it depends on what’s being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. Other times there is no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless. However, half full or half empty, it’s always a beautiful glass.

Of Absence and Presence

“Pay attention here.”  This is a phrase one of my yoga instructors used frequently in class (and a phrase which is stuck permanently in my head).  It is her way of gently pushing us to be aware of what we do moment by moment (asana, breathing, feeling, giving, getting), to go beneath the surface.

Our soul calls us to go beneath–beneath the surface of our mind and moods, beneath our ego.  We go about our lives for years and years without paying attention to what lies beneath, to what is.  Some hear this call early on, only to silence it until it demands to be heard–through illness, loss, heartbreak.  They are all blessings which transform and humble us, and bring out what matters most in life.  And teach us to surrender to all of life’s blessings, the ‘good’ and the ‘not so good.’  Heartbreak, I think your heart grows back bigger, once you get the shit beat out of you.  And the universe lets your heart expand that way, because that’s the function of all the pain and heartache you go through.  And you’ve got to go through that to come out to a better place.  There is a phenomenal amount of vitality in a broken heart.  A broken heart does not equal sadness as sadness occurs when the heart is lifeless and stone cold.

If we shut down, we will become more and more numb to life.  We will remain unchanged.  It doesn’t matter when we hear this call, it only matters that we pay attention.  I see crisis, illness, loss, heartbreak as messengers which help us evolve, teachers if you will.  More and more often I choose to open the doors I closed/kept shut earlier to these messengers.  

Another yoga instructor would from time to time advise his students to pay attention to the lessons we are offered, advising that we will be presented with the same lessons over and over (and over) again until we learn them.  

The other night I found myself thinking about a mixed media drawing I started too many years ago to recall now (at least 20 years) which is titled “Of Absence and Presence.”   I realized it represented the same message to “pay attention here (now)” to the lesson(s) here (now), to what is here (now).  I became aware of a ’sensation’ in my hip.  It wasn’t pain/discomfort.  The pain/sensation I had before surgery is gone/absent.  The sensation which is present here now is different.  I wondered if I was actually feeling my body heal.  I’ve found that when I reject what is painful, I only find more pain, and that I am also unable to embrace what is not painful.   Life becomes sterile.

Dancing lessons

I was a dancer in a ‘previous’ life.  For 17 years it was my life.  My life focus.  And then it wasn’t.  But still I clung to that dream, that identity and that loss.  Certainly I had faced much greater losses than simply a career.  A sister who died in infancy.  Then my father.  And I was due to have more in my lifetime.  Life dances and you must dance with it irregardless of your best intentions, it moves you with the rhythm and in the direction of its own unfolding.  This is the necessary price and incarnate gift of being alive in a body.  We cannot escape the continuous dance.  It is an impersonal truth of life.  None of us gets to be an exception.  Life is like this.  

I often think life would be so good if we could just freeze moments in time, the time when we were happy, when we knew we were loved. But, we can’t. And so instead, we find ourselves retracing footsteps that may have washed away. We fight to remember our connections even as time wipes our slate clean. And we strive to make new connections we hope time will indulge. When communication fails, words remain behind, proof that we were here, that we mattered, that someone cared.  In the end, the past may be all we have.

“The world we belong to

has taught us to reach deep within to respond to challenges, and we are blessed to teach others how to convert adversities into opportunities.” –Barbara Warren

 

I attended a memorial tribute for my friend Barbara this evening.  It was good.  It was difficult.  It was comforting.  There were at least 500 people in this huge banquet room at a local San Diego hotel.  There was so much love in the room.  And despite the grief that I know we have, there was not this heaviness, or sadness necessarily, but rather simply the peace and beauty and presence of Barbara.  I wept to see her smiling face once again, even if only on two enormous screens at the front of the room.  

Her daughter read something she found in Barbara’s notes which I have to share as I think it will give those of you who were not fortunate enough/blessed to know or cross paths with Barbara an idea of this wonderful woman who was my friend, my mentor, my loving mother:

Barbara wrote:  I spend my life mending people and when I see a heart that is broken, I ask God for the words.  (Barbara was a psychologist.)

Another person, her adopted brother, Larry Pustinger, said she was a ‘magic mirror’ reflecting back to everyone she met the best that was in them. 

There are people in your life who, when they leave, you realize you don’t know how to exist in a world where they don’t.  Eventually, we find a way.

I miss her terribly.

Namaste Barbara.

25% Fewer Feelings

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions.  However, after 2007, this year I made an exception.  This year, I resolved to have 25% fewer feelings about everything.

Maybe that sounds stupid, or weird, or doomed, but I meant well.  I had been flattened by my own impassioned, powerful reactions to things to the point where I made a very conscious decision to get brutally rational about everything.  And when I did get brutally rational about myself, I had no shortage of theories–some lame, some not.  I had a handful of major revelations about some of my ill-advised choices, and the frequency with which I made those choices decreased.  My assumption was this would bring enormous improvements to my life on a bunch of different fronts, as the result of conscious effort, and good for me, right?

Riiiiiiiiiight.  Absolutely.  Do you want to know how many feelings I have had about things, compared to before?  Yeah, it’s about the same.  Because no matter how ’smart’ you get, and no matter how hard you try to give your life rules, there are still going to be things that happen which aren’t going to entirely make sense.   Being ’smart’ doesn’t really mean having fewer feelings about everything, it means tempering them with a little perspective.  When you lose your perspective, that’s when things can get pretty sketchy…

Barbara Warren Tribute

IN TRIBUTE TO AN EXCEPTIONAL WOMAN AND CHAMPION

“The world we belong to has taught us to reach deep within

to respond to challenges, and we are blessed to teach

others how to convert adversities into opportunities”
                                       - Barbara Warren
 
Dear Friends,

We would be honored if you would join us in celebrating Barbara’s life with a tribute to her

memory as our mother, sister, wife and your friend. We believe though her life with us has

ended we want to rejoice and celebrate her spirit, joy and inspiration that lives on inside

those who she touched. Please join us on Sunday, October 5th, at 4pm in the

Riviera Room at the Mission Bay Hilton Hotel with a reception to follow.

 

Thank you all for your prayers and support.
Barbara’s Family
 
Mission Bay Hilton
1775 East Mission Bay Drive
San Diego, CA 92109
(619) 276-4010
Parking is complementary

 

 

 

 

Jim Knight will be doing a solo tribute Ironman in honor of Barbara in San Diego on October 10^th.

www.shadowtour.com