Kindness of Spirit

I stopped writing. The act of “publishing” my writing was never any big whoop, but the act of writing itself sure had internal value. It was the great pause button in the endless parade of thoughts and feelings that marked my waking, and often sleeping, hours. It directed and diverted me. I live in the constant presence of animals and writing about them was a way to validate my sense of belonging in that world, a world of kinship with creatures. And then I stopped wanting to write about it. Like many other people (read: women), the increasing tumult of the last years has left me embedded in a place of uncomfortable irony: I live a reasonably secure and peaceful life and I also swim endless laps of anger, angst, and rage about world events and the rabid unjustness of it all. I quit telling my stories because they seemed childish in light of those rage-producing events. I quit writing because I was spending more time being angry. It was a very bad exchange.

I’m back now because I need redemption. I am tired of the heavy energetic weight of letting so many sources of anger and hate into my consciousness. Even getting to neutral does not seem like a sufficient remedy. My time on planet Earth is flying by and my cancer diagnosis from five years ago adds a firm punctuation mark to that sentence. If I want to die a better person than I am right now, I need to radicalize kindness; not just in my actions, but in the fabric of my spirit. I am going to do that out loud, in this space. Every day I will write about shifting toward greater kindness. Every day for a year. No one needs to hear me. It’s about me hearing myself, writing it out. Who will I become, what will be my world view if I dedicate 365 days to expanding my kindness of spirit? I want to find out.

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