What gives you hope?
For me, it is kindness enacted by strangers: The man who goes out of his way to hurl the wayward ball back over the fence into the school yard. The woman who holds the door for the couple with canes. The people donating a few dollars each to make sure a project gets funded. The boy who picks up the dropped wallet and hands it back. The strangers who, together, tried to save a swarm of bees from being run over in the road.
We want to help each other.
When feeling sorrowful, or angry, or isolated, or – the big soul killer – cynical, can we remember that most often, when faced with one another, people are kind? Sure, our systems get out of control and can cause us to feel buffeted about, torn apart, and trodden down. The systems cause us much bitter complaining, and bewildered confusion. I know. Some days I feel at a loss about what to do in response to the latest churning of these systems. Trying to find a way to re-connect and bring our basic human impulses to the forefront can feel hard when faced with the daily news, or our own pain. But when we remember that we are part of those systems, we can turn our attention to the people, the land, and the creatures right in front of us. We can call up kindness once again.
Let’s look around today, take our earbuds out, lift up our eyes, and set our attention toward noticing kindness. When we set our sights on something, we include a lot more. We enable the universe to surprise us.
Let us invoke kindness, in ourselves and in the world.