Kindness

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the very spiritual experience I had at my aunt’s memorial service down in Fairfax.  It was a beautifully gray North Coast Day.  It was a beautiful gathering of friends, family, and people who she had reached.  While I was there I was overcome with love.  I was also overcome with a reminder of my spiritual journey. 

A few days later, I was relaying the experience to one of the people closest to my heart.  I told him that I had needed to be reminded that my spirituality lies deep in the belief that we are all connected.  That as human beings, we are all connected.  That we are connected to the earth around us.  That our connectedness with each other creates balance.  It was then that he asked me a question I didn’t expect.  He said, “So, how do you worship?”  Although I hadn’t’ expected the question, without hesitation, I told him “with love and kindness.”  I hadn’t had the opportunity to think about it or to figure out if it was sensible.  But I said it.  And I said it with so much conviction that I actually believed myself. 

I preach a lot about the universe and its power over us.  I speak a lot about our connectedness and how we all have a place and a pull.  I focus a lot of my thought and my writing on finding balance and peace.  I also focus a lot of energy on orgasms and asshats and Teslas.  Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily related.  But sometimes.  But everything I write about helps me to find conscious and spiritual balance.

So a couple weekends ago, when I told my friend that the way I worship, the way I celebrate my spirituality, is through love and kindness, I kind of had an epiphany.  That’s my road.  It might not always be tactful or in good form.  But that is what I believe in.  I believe in love and kindness.  I have dedicated most of my adult life to loving other people.  I have committed myself to doing right by people who need help.  And still I am more surprised when people love me back than I am when I see people who don’t understand love. 

I had a long day.  Fuck, I had a long couple of days.  For that matter, I have had a long 16 years.  But today, on the way home, I was stuck behind a Volvo station wagon, circa mid 1990’s.  You know the one with the hatchback as tall as it is wide.  And, of course, plastered on the back window was all sorts of nostalgia, in bumper sticker form.  “Clinton/Gore ’96.”  "Visualize Whirled Peas.” (My personal favorite.)  The sticker that resonated most with me was one that I remember on my step-mom’s Mercury Sable, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.”  Remember that sticker?  Ok.  If you aren’t from California, you probably don’t remember it.  It was a movement with California hippies though.  I saw that peeled, bubbling bumper sticker and noticed how the color hadn’t faded over the years.  It was weathered, but it was still the same periwinkle blue it was 20 years ago.  I smiled to myself. 

As a child, I remember the “ah ha” moment when I realized how poignant the idea of practicing “random kindness" was.  I can almost see the moment in my memory and thinking “Wow.  Just be nice to people.  No matter who they are.”  Give me some props, friends.  I was nine when I figured that out.  At that time, it meant smiling at people I didn’t know and pushing the shopping cart to that place where the shopping carts go in the parking lot.  That’s kind of impressive for a nine year old. 

The older I got though, the more I realized that kindness wasn’t random.  Kindness is a manifestation of love.  A universal, unconditional love.  A love that you show to other human beings because we all need that.  It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  We won’t necessarily die without it.  But, believe it or not, people have actually died without it.  Anyway, back to kindness and randomness.  Kindness is not random.  You choose to smile at someone as you pass on the street.  You choose to push your cart back to the shopping cart place.  You do that not because there are rules that dictate that you should do that.  You do it so the poor kid who has to walk 100 miles across the parking lot, collecting stray carts can catch a little break. 

Kindness isn’t random.  Kindness is intentional.   Kindness is spiritual.  We can’t all be connected without compassion.  Even on days like today, when I see the darkest, ugliest side of humanity masquerade as righteousness, I have to remember that there are more of us who choose love and kindness as spiritual principles than there are who choose greed and ambition.  I have to remember the days that I have held young women in my arms when they were at their very weakest.  I have to remember the people who have held me in my arms when I was at my very weakest.  I have to remember that kindness is a decision.  It isn’t random; it’s a choice. 

-Inner Peas