The time for kindness

I do not have what most people would call "a strong personality."

Distinctive, yes. Unique, probably.

My friend Evan often describes me as "a girl whose axis is on a tilt." (cue group sing-along of this epic song)

Strong, though? Not in the way this culture defines that word.

Yesterday, the sangha continued reading the new book by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Shambhala Principle. Full disclosure: I haven't read this book beyond what we've discussed as a group at the center, but I've got a pretty good sense of what he's talking about from the bit I've read, and it's really resonating with me so far.

Grouches like hugs, too

We're living in a time when the majority of humanity is suffering from sickness. Our politicians are obsessed with power, and it's making us sick. We're obsessed with technology-- so much that we have become confused about what is real  and what is constructed (hint: it all is), and it's making us sick. Our food comes from hurt, and it's making us sick (literally). We value industry over environment, and it's making us sick. We value money over meaning, and it's making us sick. Sickness everywhere.

But most of all, we've lost touch with ourselves. We have lost faith in our basic goodness, as a species.  We get bombarded with stories of violence, every day, at every angle. We believe that when we are angry, we are showing our "true selves" and "aggressiveness" is something to be rewarded. Anger and aggressiveness are emotions that are "strong."

This is not an anti-society rant. This is not even one of my anti-technology rants (though I do love to have those). This is a call-- a plea-- to begin curing ourselves.

We have the antidote to this sickness. Humanity is at a crossroads-- it all comes down to a choice, and it begins with one simple action:

Be kind.

Be kind to each other. And be kind to yourself.

I know I sound a little nuts-- do I really believe we can save the world by being more kind? Yes. Absolutely. It's simple, but it's not easy.

Here's where I want to challenge our society's notion of what it means to be strong. It takes strength to be kind. It''s easy to be aggressive and unaccommodating. It's easy to just be totally pissed off all the time. It's easy to be in a hurry, to be too busy to care.  Those emotions allow us to build a wall around ourselves-- we don't have to think about anyone else in the world.

Be excellent to each other!

Kindness is hard. Random acts of kindness are often not received well. People don't think they deserve kindness, and so they're skeptical when someone gives it out for free. At best, we'll get called naive or maybe crazy. At worst, we will be on the receiving end of some anger.  But don't let that stop you.

Be kind and without becoming attached to a particular outcome (this is what my yogi friends call "karma yoga".) Be kind without desire for reciprocity. One simple, random and even silly act of compassion is enough. Kindness is one of those great things-- by making someone else feel better, we feel better ourselves. 

It was one of the first life lessons I learned from psychology-- if you want to like someone, do them a favor. If you want more kindness in your life, be kind to others. 

Go pass out flowers in the park. Buy a stranger's coffee. Tip really well (and write a haiku on the receipt). Smile at someone who looks lonely. You'll feel silly, sure, but you'll also feel better, I promise.

The time I saw an invisible man

There's this little gas station by the beach that is always full. On any given day, at any given hour, there is a dangerous cluster of cars on the side of the road trying to get in line for the pump. It typically takes me about an extra 15 minutes of wait time at that station, during which I am completely and silently flipping out in my car, hoping that dude with the fancy smart phone and aviators doesn't back his ridiculously expensive ride into my honda civic. Because that would suck.

So the other day, I finally got to the pump (after dodging a motorcyclist with dog-in-tow... don't ask). I hopped out of my car and started purchasing some fossil fuels, when all of the sudden I hear a voice behind me

"If only it were that easy, right?"

I spun around and came face to face with a man wearing faded fatigues, carrying a huge bag of bottles and cans on his back. The others at the station around me glanced at him warily, and then continued about their business, making a point of turning away from him. I, too, quickly looked away. I don't know why.

"If only it were easy enough to just live a simple life, baking pastries. Not taking orders from nobody."

 It took me a moment to register what he was talking about. I realized he was referring to my silly Johnny Cupcakes t-shirt that read "Make Cupcakes not War". I had mindlessly put it on that morning in a half-baked attempt to avoid looking like a teacher.

Suddenly, I felt a tug inside me, and turned to look at him again, directly this time. His hair was long, and he wore it pulled back, revealing a face tanned and slightly streaked with dust. His eyes were what caught me off guard. While the rest of his face seemed weather beaten and tired, he had the most brilliant and youthful blue eyes. They were playful, and seemed to smile on their own.

"Yeah, you're absolutely right" I said. "It would be nice if things were simpler."

"I've got a lot of buddies that are up there," he gestured at the sky "looking down and wondering what the hell is going on in this world. Wondering why we still take orders, making the same damn mistakes.  Things are just so fucked up. No one seems to notice or care. It's like I'm invisible. It's like it's not even real."

He said all this gently and without the slightest bit of defensiveness in his tone, as if he knew he didn't have anything to prove to me. As if he just knew I was there to listen. And it's a good thing too, because at that moment, all my words failed me. My mind filled with questions:

How does this happen-- how do we let human beings fall through the cracks? What does it mean to serve your country, and then have your country turn its back on your suffering? What does it feel like to be unheard and unseen? To be perpetually ignored and denied person-hood, day after day?  Do you begin to believe the world around you-- do you start to think you are actually invisible, that your pain is somehow deserved? Do you forget that you exist at all?

After a few moments, the pump indicated my tank was full. Before I got back into my car, I looked back at him. He smiled at me, gave me a little wave and said "Have a beautiful day. God bless you." I smiled and waved back, got into my car and drove away.

I know this doesn't sound like an awesome, positive story, but it was a really beautiful moment of connection that I've been reflecting on over the past few days.

We live in such a rough world, and it is scary for us to acknowledge how easy it is to slip through the cracks of society. I think that's why people are so uncomfortable when interacting with the homeless. Looking at them in the face, means coming to terms with the fragility of our own situation.  In an admittedly uncomfortable way, I feel connected to that man. It's like he was holding up a mirror, reflecting an alternative-- but very real-- reality. We are separated only by a very thin thread of circumstance.

I think at our core, we share the same nature. We all do.

((According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ,  62,619 veterans are homeless on any given night.  Nearly 13% of the homeless adult population are veterans.
Approximately 12,700 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) were homeless in 2010. For more information, see http://nchv.org/))

The time I remembered why I love narrative

The thing is, I love stories. I love the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. I love watching someone realize that everything they think they know about themselves all spawns from one small moment buried deep in their past.

I can't even tell you how much our high school selves influence our adult selves. The triumphs and pain we felt in our adolescence often can haunt us-- carving out paths for us without our explicit permission. I know this holds true for me, anyway.

People get this incredible look on their faces when they pinpoint the exact moment in their history that determined their path. Sometimes it's a really big doofy smile, and their whole faces light up. Sometimes it's this look of complete shock, and their eyes get really big and solemn, like they're staring off at some distant horizon. Sometimes people start crying. But whatever the initial reaction when recounting this story, it's like watching a major weight being lifted off of their chests. Or a veil from over their eyes. Like suddenly they're seeing themselves as the complex and rich beings they truly are.

It's funny, I was worried that working in the non-profit sector in a field only tangentially related to my own would somehow distract me from my passion for narrative. It seems that it has only strengthened it.

The time I was stuck on the 405 and thought about the future

Los Angeles is a city of extremes. Even after being here for half a year, there are times when I'm still blown away by its duplicity-- the rich hiding away in their mansions, and everyone else below them, struggling to either get there or at least just survive; the striking natural beauty of the mountains and the ocean, brushing up against the cold cement industrialization.

I was stuck in traffic on the 405, on my way to a school in the Valley, when I decided to take a moment and look around out my window. These mountains that look like perfect cardboard cut-outs, stuck to the horizon and looming over the foothills of lush green, all juxtaposed against the immense, sprawling concrete of this place-- they all serve as a constant and beautiful reminder that humans are just a blip on the radar. Someday our structures will all be underwater, or underground. And who knows where we'll be.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago about this idea people have of "saving the earth". The truth is-- and I know this sounds odd coming from an environmental activist like myself-- I actually don't think the earth needs saving.

This is what concerns me most about the group I like to call the Leave it Alone Skeptic. They're the ones who almost sound like environmentalists--  They know something's up, they may even admit that humans are causing it. But any action we take as a population is too risky and ultimately pointless because the earth can heal itself.

It seems like we somewhat agree. The primary difference is that I believe that while the earth will continue to adapt, new species will evolve and all the old patterns and species will fade away, and I don't view humans to be above this at all. When I tell students that over the next century we're predicting 20-50% of species to be headed toward extinction, I'm not excluding humans from that statistic. As much as we want to convince ourselves that we are the master manipulators of science, biology and even evolution, the fact remains that we are still animals, dependent on the earth's conditions to remain constant.