Be Kind

The wide open road was before us, feeling as though we were often the only people on earth. We were driving across the Top End of Australia, from Broome in Western Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory. This was our big Australian adventure before moving back to live in the United States. Ed and I hired a 4WD for the trek and, fairly early on, we thought we had switched on our supplemental fuel tank but a little while later...chug, chug, chug we came to a gentle halt alongside the road. It was the wet season, which translates as the low tourist season, so very few people were traveling and my mind tried to qualm the rising uneasiness that it might be a while before any help arrived, not that we had any way of calling for such help being in such a remote part of the country.

As good fortune would have it, a few kilometers back, we had passed a pickup truck filled with local aboriginals who, seeing us stopped on the side of the road in a most unintended looking way, pulled over to help us. The bonnet (hood) was up with Ed and an aboriginal guy peering into the engine as I sat in the passenger seat thumbing through the owners manual. At about the same time, we all realized we hadn't "primed" the supp tank and once we did we were able to be on our way.

We thanked and waved goodbye to our road angels and had an amazing journey without any other troubles. Unconditional kindness from total strangers.

This story came to mind as sometimes I sit on a Sunday afternoon lacking inspiration for what I'd like as a theme for the upcoming week. This past Sunday just happened to be one of those days. So I sat with it for a bit, trying to be okay in not knowing and hoping for divine inspiration. Often when I'm not sure as what to write about, I simply allow myself to recall the previous week's conversations and see if anything floats to the surface. And sure enough...it did. I was motivated to return to some level of simplicity, a theme that perhaps I'd touched upon before so here it is...be kind.

You may have heard the saying, "We can be anything. How about we be kind?". I loved that when I first saw this quote, a part of me thought about the childhood notion that I could be anything, so why not become an astronaut, or a famous actor, or a professional athlete? It didn't even pop into my head that being was a state of mind rather than becoming something that you weren't yet. I can be kind in the here and now without having to study astrophysics, acting or practicing for hours a day on my tennis serve. And if I can adopt the attitude of kindness towards myself, I have an opportunity to soften the inner critic and move more toward self-care and self-love.

Another dimension of this thought is: what does it feel like to be the recipient of kindness? When I think about the above story, not only did our roadside helpers get us out of a sticky and potentially dangerous situation (being stranded in the middle of nowhere for how long??) but I was, and still am, filled with tremendous gratitude. So much so, that their act of unconditional kindness has become one of the stories of my life...that's how powerful an impact it had.  I know that all of us have been on the receiving end of such acts of kindness, likely from complete strangers who see our suffering and reach out their hand to offer support.

When we know what receiving kindness feels like, when we act in a way that is kind towards ourselves, it creates this natural reaction when we see the suffering of others. Compassion means to "suffer with", so when we can identify it in another, we act without hesitation on their behalf.

I needed this "be kind" reminder this week and, given the reaction to students in classes, so did others. In a world filled with nasty rhetoric and negative discourse, a dose of kindness can feel like a balm on cracked skin. I am not only reminding myself and others to be kind to ourselves but to be impeccable with our word and to feel the beauty of receiving random acts of kindness from others. You just never know what ripple you're creating when you propagate this energy. It may just carry such impact that it ends up in someone's future blog!