Seasons Greetings

May you be filled with peace

May you experience joy

May you have a loved-filled holiday season 

And all the very best for 2017!

The Present of Kindness

     I wish I had told my mother that she had been kind instead of telling her we’d never practiced kindness in our family.  She died over 2 years ago.  Now I see that she had, in fact, been incredibly kind.

     Recently I bought an Instapot.  I could never, ever have imagined myself using a pressure cooker.  They've always terrified me.  A few minutes ago, I walked away from trying to write an article to check on the pot.   I was amazed at how blithely I flicked the dial to one side to vent it before opening the lid (my ease arises from knowing the pot has 10 built-in safety features).

     The sound of the escaping pressure brought my mother to mind.  She had cooked countless of my childhood meals in a pressure pot.  The nerve-rattling shrieks and whistles of the old fashioned pressure pots, which she used on a regular coal stove burning anthracite coal (not easy to do), forms the background sound of my mother’s cooking and our home life.  As I reflect now, I see her kindness was as unconventional and delicious as her cooking.   

     Love for her was not in hugging and kissing her children. Kindness wasn’t in telling us nice things about ourselves, or for that matter even being encouraging when she disagreed with us.  Kindness for her was in toughening up her daughters, and placing a dish on the dinner table, perhaps a few days or weeks later, which you, in passing, had said you craved. 

     We don’t often reflect on the kindness of others in our lives.  The sad thing is:  if our ideas of people and things are too rigid, then we won't clearly see all of them.  Human beings are able to hear many octaves of sound, but are only able to see one octave of light called visible/rainbow light.   This means we don’t see infrared, ultraviolet, or microwave light and so on. They exist but we are blind to them. 

     If our view or idea of kindness is limited, then we will fail to see when others are being kind to us.  Kindness comes in many forms.  It can be someone bringing in the mail, returning the trashcans to the side yard, picking up a loaf of bread from the grocery store, bringing you the towel you forgot, turning on the front light when you come home, and the list goes on. 

     The kindness of others surrounds us, but we have to train ourselves to see its wider spectrum.  Things within your reach right now are there because of the kindness of someone in this world.  They may be on the other side of the planet or in your neighbourhood, but somebody made the chair you are sitting on, built the device you are reading this article on, the plate you are eating off, harvested the vegetable you are cooking, built the telephone you are speaking on and the house you are sheltering in, and sewed the clothes you are wearing.  These people may have been paid to do a job, but they also contributed their energy, creativity, and passion to eventually help you live a more easeful happy life.  This is kindness. 

     So this holiday season, when things aren't going as we'd like, or we are invariably presented with gifts we won’t use or don’t like, we can instead focus on the kindness of the grandmother, aunt or friend who prepared the holiday get-together, or took the time to shop, wrap, and share something that they thought will bring us joy.  Our forebearance could be the gift of kindness we can  present to them.

     May you have a peaceful and grateful holiday season.