Kindness in today's world

Front porch flowers yesterday

Not knowing for sure what I might write about, yesterday I snapped this picture of my front porch flowers to start the process: showing what my petunias and geraniums are doing right now. I look at the flowers in my fellow bloggers' posts and realize my little offering is modest. But just right for me, since I tend to be someone whose garden needs to flourish under my "benign neglect." In other words, I enjoy looking at them and making sure they are watered, but otherwise they must get by without much else.

I've been searching for ways to heal myself, and I've found that kindness is the best way. —Lady Gaga

Kindness. What an interesting concept. I've written before about how much better it feels to treat others with kindness rather than hatred, to see them as we would like to be seen, and having a sense of forgiveness for slights, great or small,  to allow ourselves to grow in kindness.

It's amazing how much that can change my mood and the trajectory of my entire day. Finding ways to choose the softer, more inclusive path makes my life feel so much better. In other posts I've given ideas of how we might find more kindness in our lives, with the incredibly distressing news cycle trying hard to make us suspicious of everything and everybody. But it doesn't have to be like that. 

Instead, we can start each day with the idea that we will be agents of good today, that we will find ways to make someone else's day better. After all, this day is really all we have: our hopes and dreams can disappear in the blink of an eye. Nobody has a  guarantee that there will be a tomorrow, so let's take the present moment and use it for joy and love. We do get to choose that much.

This past week I joined the Senior Trailblazers for a hike I have enjoyed for more than a decade. The weather was perfect, late summer and clear skies made for a cold start in the High Country, but more than a dozen of us made the trek together. It was really nice to see everyone again, but I was so nervous about whether I could still do it that I hardly slept the night before. I worried that I would have ankle problems, or overheat as I have often lately, and I built the entire excursion into a problem. 

It occurs to me that I am no longer the risk taker I was in my earlier years. No, these days I am happy to keep going in a much safer, more sedate way. This is someone who enjoyed hurling herself out of an airplane several times in one day. But that was then. Now, I am so very happy to walk or hike, using my trekking poles for balance, with good friends in the wilderness and forests of my world. And remembering always to give thanks for the ability to continue well into my late seventies. 

I read a really good story this past week, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It's a book that will make you think about what your life might have been like, if only you had made a different decision in some past situation. From that link:

As a place, the Midnight Library isn't really a library (of course), but is instead a 101-level lecture in parallel universe theory, philosophy and quantum indeterminacy. Really, it's a therapist simulator, minus the couch. A place of regret and possibility. Because who, in their darkest moments — or maybe just on a Tuesday — hasn't wondered what life would be like if only...

 I really enjoyed the book and thinking about how different my own life would have been if I had taken off in a different direction at various junctures in my life. If I had not made that first tandem jump back in 1990 and not having fallen in love with freefall, I would never had met my life partner, for one thing. As he sleeps next to me, I try but fail to imagine my life without him. Although we don't jump out of airplanes together any more, skydiving shaped my life and changed its trajectory forever. We have been together now for three decades and watched each other grow old. We met just before our fiftieth birthdays and, doing the math, you know we are well into our final years. Happy together in ways I could never have imagined.

When I retired from my job in 2007, we made the decision to move somewhere other than Colorado. What if we had chosen to stay, or to move some place like, for instance, Louisiana? Or New Jersey? Those places are in the news today because of Hurricane Ida, which caused enormous destruction as it tore apart entire cities this past week.

I am being careful here, because I could easily go down the path in my writing to consider today's news cycle. But I won't, since I believe most of us are looking for something else to fill our minds with. Like love and joy and hope and happiness. These aspects of life are always available to us by changing the direction of our thoughts, by looking past the present difficulties and being grateful for that which is always present in our lives: peace and hope for a better future. As I write this, I realize that there are many of us who are suffering, but it is possible to look beyond today's problems to a time when things will get better. And one thing I can promise you: it will change, because nothing in life holds still. It's always changing, and we can imagine a happy future just as well as any other.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. —Albert Einstein

I am incredibly blessed in my own present world, but I also know it will not stay this way forever. Life isn't like that, but it doesn't mean I need to cower in a corner and be afraid of what is coming. It does mean that I must continue to take care of myself and my surroundings as best I can, and look ahead to more joy and love in my life, no matter what else comes along. We can all do that, if we just put our minds to it. 

Oh, yes. A good friend of mine has always said "yes" to the world and what comes to her through it. And why not? It's so much easier to say yes than to try to push the river into our own idea of what our lives should look like. I so enjoy seeing how others are coping during this difficult time in the history of the world. Many of us are continuing to support and love each other, choosing kindness instead of meanness, choosing love instead of hate: we can do that through every breath we take.

And now it's time for me to finish up this post so I can publish it and see what you, my dear virtual friends, have to add to it. I always look forward to each one's "take" on my Sunday morning musings. And I do hope you will find some way today to add a little kindness to the world around you. I'll do the same and we will have made a difference.

My tea is gone, my dear partner sleeps quietly next to me, and the world looks so much brighter right now than it did when I sat down to write. Be well, dear ones, and I look forward to the coming week, with light and love in my heart.