By Amaya Gayle Gregory
Sedona, AZ — A thought has been niggling at me for the past couple of days. I can see the bigger picture, the hurt and pain, the wounds, the raw open sores people carry, so I tend to tread lightly. I understand the wounds are speaking not the true being, so I am kind as best I know how.
But this thought has been hanging around: If I was standing in Nazi Germany in 1930s with the ability to see where our lives were headed, would I be kind to those who supported the new dictatorship, those who in a few short years or months would lose their way so completely as to murder millions of people? Would I sit by and be kind to those who organized the brown shirts, who spoke ill of my neighbors, who did things, so many things, that were harmful to humanity?
Some would say that they didn’t know where it was headed. Some say that now. I am not one of them. I know where this ends. The playbook those in power are using is the same playbook that authoritarians across the world have used. It’s obvious if you are willing and open enough to actually look.
So what does that mean for kindness? Do I open my mouth and call it what it is? And what in my crazy upbringing says that kindness and truth are incompatible self-canceling mutually exclusive possibilities?
Silence.
You see, the ability to be kind has nothing to do with how others are behaving, the atrocities they are committing, or the harm they are doing. It has everything to do with who I am being while I am responding. The more I think about it, this inquiry is aligned with Ghandi and his unwillingness to use violence to counter violence, with Jesus, one of the world’s great peaceful anarchists, with Mother Teresa who would not attend protests against, only stances for.
I have experienced years of abuse in my life, years that finally taught me to walk away, to leave the abuser to himself. While I couldn’t change him, I didn’t need to let him change me. That’s a real solution for an interpersonal relationship, but does it work in the situation we now find ourselves?
Partly.
We can’t walk away unless everyone with a conscience, who cares about others (and there are more of us than we think) walks away together, choosing not to play this new game, a national strike that has no end date, only a requirement for the dismantling of the constitution to end and for those in power to willingly step aside so the harm to ourselves, our neighbors, our allies, and the world stops too.
Can we be kind to ourselves, to our neighbors, to those in power, those causing immense harm, while we stand firm? Yes. It’s a question of who we are, of what we are standing for, and how deep fear has set its claws in us. If what we stand for is inclusion, our beautiful diversity, and an equal chance for all, anything less than kindness betrays us as no better than those who are doing their damnedest to divide and conquer. Regardless of our disdain for the harm bringers, the fear peddlers, they too, are part of us.
Raising children, which by the way I wasn’t that great at, is a perfect analogy. Ideally, when I see my child causing harm to another, I don’t just stand there, do nothing, smiling, being kind. That’s a pseudo kindness. That’s being kind to my programming, to the desire not to confront or be seen as mean while I let meanness run amuck. I don’t have to be mean, to be violent. I pick the child up and take him to his room. After a few minutes I go in and talk with the child, not yell, not berate, not belittle, talk and help them to understand that I’m not going to accept him hurting others or others hurting him.
That’s not what I did many years ago. I yelled. It didn’t work. My sons just shut down which caused greater harm long-term. I wasn’t kind because I wasn’t kind to myself, because I was frustrated, doubtful of my own parenting skills, because I was unhappy, abused by my husband and allowing myself to be abused. I was already angry before my child hurt another child.
It was a pretty visible pattern of abuse, one I couldn’t see at the time. It’s amazing how our beliefs blind us to what is happening.
This seems to be where we are as a people. Driving on the freeway perfectly demonstrates the levels of increasing anger in our world right now. It’s surprising there aren’t more fatal accidents with the intensity. It’s a perfect storm. Anger, abuse, harm, rinse, repeat.
So here we are.
Do we complete the cycle, or do we break it?
Do we give ourselves and the child a time-out?
Do we find a way to shut down the anger and harm without causing more anger and harm or do we just continue the cycle?
That’s really the question, or at least it is for me.
From a place of calm within I am a force to be reckoned with. We all are. Love is my mentor. Kind words, not the sappy fake kind, but genuine, heart aligned, allow truth to be heard. They are helpmates. I don’t have to be mean and spiteful. I don’t need to repay disparaging remarks with the same currency. I’ve done that and it was never a peaceful easy solution.
I don’t know if this resonates for anyone other than me. If it does or not isn’t important. What’s clear to me is my path forward. What’s important is how I treat people, how honest I am, my willingness to stand for what is important which is each and every one of us. Remaining silent is no longer an option. Returning spite for spite, anger for anger, hate for hate, harm for harm is.
Amaya Gayle is the author of Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY
image: Spiritual Desktop Wallpapers, wallpapers.com