Children run and shout outside my house. Bruised knees and sticky hands speak of good sweat and endless summers.
Children look out from the tv screen with fear and hunger in their eyes. Some have no shoes, no parents. Some have innocence in them yet.
She sings an aria onstage. Her elegant gown sparkles under the stage lights. The audience falls into tears.
She’s shouting from the bus stop, leaning into the road and yelling, yelling at the cars that pass. A muddy dress hangs over bones. And everyone’s looking away.
The bells ring in celebration and the world rejoices.
Across the ocean, bombs explode.
That one wants a bigger gun, that one a bigger mansion, the other one a job and roof over his family’s heads. Some people only seem interested in fighting. Others dream of peace.
And here I am, filled with gratitude and guilt. Who am I to live such a rich life? To have a home this safe, a family this healthy, such easy access to food and water? And who am I to want more? To ever complain that the dinner’s burned or the traffic’s too slow?
I dream of peace, I do. I dream of a world where we aren’t afraid anymore, aren’t fighting. In this world, we lean on love moment by moment by moment by moment. But, I also know the one in me who gets angry, who says the things she doesn’t mean, who lied when she didn’t have to, who wants to keep it all for herself, who picks meaningless fights, who didn’t help when she so easily could have.
And I wonder which one I am. Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Maybe I’m just the one wiping ants off the kitchen floor. Or that one there, in the blazer and sunglasses. Or there, driving the minivan. Or there, buying milk. And then I question if there’s anything I can even do from here.
This is why I practice compassion. It cuts through all the fear and blaming and takes me back to what we all share. Back to where we’re all in this together. We’re all the angry one or the scared one sometimes. We’re all the one who wants to be right, to be heard, to get ahead. We’re all the one who wants something better for ourselves and, I do believe, for us all.
If we go back far enough and dig down deeper than the power struggles and possessions, we’re all that intangible, unnameable essence. Life-force. Prana. Source. Spirit. Qi. Love.
I’ve felt and seen it. In the ones who hold hands and jump across the puddles, the ones who keep on trying, the ones who let the walls down for just a second.
When I can believe it, I let Life cradle me in that clear knowing. Those are the times that restore me. They tide me over through the doubt, when I want to cry out to Life, “Please don’t lie to me.”
Dear {!firstname_fix}, I don’t know the reason for all the fires and famine and wars, and I sure don’t have the solution. BUT I believe we’re in this together.
We all just want to lose our minds to peace for a minute, to feel clear and brave. We want security and happiness. And I have to believe this is true of even the ones I say I can’t understand.
I have to trust, too, that goodness will prevail.
Every time I feel too small to make any kind of difference, I only need to consider the alternative. To root for hate? To live in service of inhumanity? Compassion is the only way I see forward, and it has to start with me. And you.
One by one, through our own compassion, we can shift our perspective. We can offer what we can and lessen what we can. (It doesn’t have to be big.) We can do the inside healing work that allows the outside healing work. (It doesn’t have to be fast.) We can pour our love inward to shine it outward. (Even if it only reaches us, it’s reached someone.) We can meditate or pray, volunteer, donate, consciously consume, or just continue rooting for the goodness, the world, and all her beings.
One minute, three minutes, fifteen minutes at a time, this has changed the way I see the world. Loving is what we need to do to turn things around, so I’m loving. And I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.
One by one by one, we’ve got this,
Leslie
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