December 19, 2021
For several years our country—and the world—have been going through ever-increasing difficulties: political turmoil, Covid, economic disruptions, mounting climate problems—all increasing the level of polarization, resentment, blame, anger, frustration, loneliness, and despair. It is hard to see what will come of all this.
In the face of these difficulties, these things I know:
1. If there is a way through to a better place in our relations with each other, it will be through an increase in understanding, respect, and consideration for others.
2. If there is any chance to create a better world, the path will be through kindness, compassion, and love.
3. No matter the state of the world around us, each of us has the capacity to increase kindness, compassion, and love within ourselves, and to share those energies with others.
4. Each of us can find a place of peace inside ourselves to organize around, no matter the state of the world. The greatest souls have been forged on the anvil of difficulties, and the great exemplars of humanity have been shaped and molded in the fires of trial and tribulation.
5. As long as we seek only to make our own lives better, we will fail. We are inextricably connected with others and to the greater whole. Without a connection to something larger than our personal ego concerns, life’s trajectory is inevitably downward toward meaninglessness and death.
The perennial message of the wise
These conclusions are not original, of course. All the wisdom traditions of human history have taught them in one form or another. Among the wise men and women who gave us these traditions, some felt a call from within to live from compassion, love, and kindness; others felt their call to be coming from a transcendent source. Perhaps these are simply two ways to speak of the same thing. Both involve getting out of one’s self-centered cocoon and moving into an ever-larger circle of compassion, as Albert Einstein put it:
“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”
Herman Melville said it this way:
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men: and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
It is worth reflecting on Melville here: What if, either in the sense of karma or in the modern psychological language of projection, our thoughts and expectations play a large part in the world we experience. What if we encounter out there in the world the attitudes and feelings we have organized our thinking around? If so, when we are suspicious, angry, interested only in getting for ourselves, that is how other people will appear to us. If this is so, the best way to change what we experience, the best way to encounter a kinder, more compassionate world, is to change our own thoughts and actions toward others.
There are countless examples of great men and women who followed the call to live from compassion, love, and kindness in every age, including wisdom tradition founders such as Jesus, the Buddha, and Confucius. In modern times there are countless examples as well, such as Mother Teresa, Mahatmas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Florence Nightingale.
And there is Albert Schweitzer. Already a worldly success at a young age, Schweitzer experienced a profound call to care for the poorest of the poor in Africa, and spent the rest of his life doing just that. His message to us captures the heart of the teaching of so many:
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
Winston Churchill put the same message most succinctly:
“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
And the great Buddhist mystic Shantideva summarized the same point perfectly:
All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
The Importance of the Small
A crucial point, though, is that moving toward kindness, compassion, and love does not require grand efforts or radical change. We can each begin with little things right now. Mother Teresa had it right when she said:
“We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”
Most “big things” are about the ego and ambitions of the doer rather than the needs of those being served. William James saw this clearly in his later years:
“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.”
Service is most effective when we simply do what we can to help those who cross our pathway. If each of us would just take the little opportunities that come up, moment by moment, to offer a hand when it is needed, the world would be a radically better place. Right here, right now, each of us can offer kindness and compassion to those we meet, even if it is but a word or a smile.
The gift of consciousness
Another way to give is to become conscious of, and own up to, one’s own mistakes. A small book, Random Acts of Kindness, has many wonderful examples. Here’s one:
“I was driving home from work one day, and the traffic was terrible. We were crawling along, and out of nowhere, this guy just pulls out onto the shoulder, passes a whole line of cars, and cuts me off so quickly I have to slam on the brakes to keep from crashing into him.
“I was really rattled. About fifteen minutes later, I’m stopped at a light and I look over and there is the same guy next to me, waving for me to roll down my window.
I could feel my adrenaline starting to flow, and all my defenses coming up, but for some reason, I rolled down the window, and he says, ‘I am terribly sorry. Sometimes when I get into my car I become such a jerk. I know this must seem stupid, but I am glad I could find you, to apologize.’
“Suddenly, my whole body just relaxed, and all the tension and frustration of the day, the traffic, life just dissipated in this wonderfully warm, unexpected embrace.”
Imagine a world in which all the people who offended you, hurt your feelings, caused you pain and suffering, apologized like that driver!
Unfortunately, none of us has the power to bring that about. There is one thing every one of us can do, however. We can have the courage to recognize and admit to the times we have offended another, hurt someone’s feelings, caused pain—and do what that driver did, apologize. This will change the world we experience dramatically. And it might inspire others to act in the same way.
How to proceed
It is, of course, hard to know how to proceed toward lofty goals when mired in the struggles we each face. The best ways I know to move forward are:
1) Begin, right now, this minute, to practice kindness as best you can.
William Penn, the Quaker who had a profound influence on early America, captured the essence of this message:
“If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”
And the Dalai Lama put it most clearly:
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
2) Make a determined effort to understand and respect everyone you meet(even those with whom you disagree).
Jesus famously said “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”and, “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
And the Buddha said, “Hatreds never cease through hatred; through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law.”
3) Help someone who needs help.
When Jesus began his mission, he stated clearly what he was called to do:
To preach the gospel to the poor;
To heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed.
In a similar vein, Confucius’ most central teaching was that a person must cultivate and exhibit rén (the most important virtue). What is rén? Its characteristics have variously been described as kindness, goodness, compassion, deep empathy, humaneness, and an attitude of benevolence and care toward others. Sometimes it is simply thought of as love, in the sense of the Greek word agape.
Confucius was also one of first to give voice to a sentiment so many of the wisdom figures have shared: In some mysterious way, we are all connected.
“Within the four seas, all men are brothers.”
4) Seek a connection to something larger than yourself and try to come into harmony with that. As William James made clear, this is the central message of all the wisdom traditions—that there is an Unseen Order, “and our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” (All the traditions offer methods for pursuing this connection, as well as for overcoming the resistance of the ego to bringing oneself into harmony with that which is larger than ourselves.)
Viktor Frankl’s life is a dramatic example of this path. After surviving the Nazi concentration camps, he went on to teach that a meaningful life is possible no matter the difficulty of one’s circumstances, and he gave powerful examples of those who lived this in the camps (certainly one of the most difficult of places one can imagine of doing so).
Martin Seligman, a psychologist deeply influenced by Frankl, sums up the message:
“In a meaningful life you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self.”
Fortunately, most of us do not have to endure trials as great as those of Frankl, but we are all called to do the little things that present themselves to us in our own lives. Albert Camus provides a simple path forward:
“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him.”
The ever-present call
I believe the call to be more loving, kind, and compassionate comes to all of us. In fact, it is probably always present, but most of us only occasionally let it break through into consciousness. Even when it does break through, many of us pay little attention because we are so caught up in the details of our daily lives. And when we do hear its whisper, many of us recognize it but then turn away because we sense it will not be easy.
It isn’t easy. Some lines from the poem, Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye, capture this powerfully:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
“It is I you have been looking for,”
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
(The full poem: https://poets.org/poem/kindness)
Sometimes we also turn away because we are afraid we will be hurt or taken advantage of. This story about the pro golfer Roberto De Vicenzo (highly successful in the 1950’s and 60s) has always moved and inspired me to pay less attention to being afraid of being taken advantage of:
“De Vicenzo was playing in a tournament that he won. As he was leaving, a woman came up to him in the parking lot, telling him about how she had lost her job and her baby was sick, and she had no money to pay for medicine.
“He immediately took out his check, endorsed it and handed it over to her. The next week, he was back at the club, and one of the mangers said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you know that lady who you gave the check to, well she’s a fraud; there was no lost job, and no sick baby.’
“You mean there is not a baby dying for lack of medicine? That’s the best news I’ve heard all day!”
We should be less concerned about being taken advantage of and more concerned about doing what we can, putting aside cynicism and fear of gullibility. Many times other people are sincere, honest, and considerate, and if sometimes they are not, perhaps accepting that to be so is a small price to pay to be able to live in a world where we recognize and honor the goodness there is.
A reciprocal universe
Many of the wisdom traditions tell us we live in a reciprocal universe, such as the Biblical verse saying, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.” Many eastern traditions rest on the idea of karma. And Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said:
“The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out
of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is
instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by that action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. On the other hand, if a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being.”
However these things work, one of the most valuable things we can each do is recognize that those we are helping are helping us in return by accepting our gift. Sometimes they do much more, helping us learn lessons we most need to learn.
Many of us would rather give than receive, but it is of great value to receive in the right spirit. Receiving with gratitude and humility is itself a service. When giving and receiving become an honored exchange, flowing back and forth in a spirit of mutuality, all are blessed.
Another story from Random Acts of Kindness:
“I used to make an eighty-mile drive to visit my parents. One forty-mile stretch of the road is in the middle of nowhere. One day as I was driving alone along this barren patch, I saw a family on the side of the road with a flat tire. Normally I do not stop in such situations, but for some reason I felt the need to do so that day.
“The family was very relieved when I volunteered to drive them to a gas station about ten miles down the road to get help. I left them at the station because the attendant said he would take them back to their car and drove on my way. About twelve miles later I had a blowout. Since I couldn’t change the tire myself, I was stranded and not sure what to do.
“But in only about ten minutes along came a car and it pulled over to offer help. It was the same family I had stopped for earlier that day.”
The Dalai Lama states a similar message:
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
This story from Random Acts of Kindness has always been especially powerful for me:
“I was heading with my girlfriend through the Santa Cruz Mountains on the way to a Samoyed breeder to pick up a new puppy. It was raining hard and the dirt road that was supposed to lead to the breeder’s farmhouse was only a wide rut. My Honda was having more and more trouble with the mud and the steep incline, and there was an ugly drop into a now-rushing creek bed to one side of the road.
“Suddenly we ground to a complete stop: in the dark, stuck in heavy mud, with no tools, phones, or—so far as we knew—human being for miles around. We waited for about an hour, debating the merits of hiking in the pouring rain back toward civilization (miles away), trying to get the car unstuck (our attempts so far had just wedged us more tightly in the mud), and yelling (very, very loudly) for help.
“We were sitting in the car feeling hopeless when we saw faint lights behind us—we hadn’t heard the engine because of the rain. A young man in a VW appeared. He was headed up the hill toward his home beyond the breeder’s farm. He told us he had towing equipment, and would come back and get us unstuck, and would also let the breeder know we were on the way.
“We settled back to wait, half doubting that he would return. After all, it was pouring, it was 10:30 at night, and if he came back to do what he promised, he would be completely covered in mud within minutes.
“In forty-five minutes he was back with a truck and towing equipment. Half an hour later we sat in a warm kitchen, out of the rain, with hot cups of tea, and surrounded by teacup-sized Samoyeds.”
Why on earth would someone drive two extra hours late at night and work in the mud and rain to help total strangers? This is one of the great mysteries of existence. The answer that all the great saints and sages have given is that we are all somehow connected; that only by getting out of our narrow, self-centered selves and recognizing that connection can we ever find happiness or fulfillment.
William Cowper captures it perfectly:
“Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.”
Movies and stories
One of the best-selling books of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, gives one of the messages of the wisdom traditions very powerfully. In the story, Scrooge says to the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley:
“’But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.”
Marley replies:
“Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
(I have always been very fond of A Christmas Carol, and have watched several versions of the movie. Recently I listened to an excellent audio version of the book and became aware of the rich insight that Dickens conveyed that is often lost in the movie versions. I recommend the book for this holiday season. Read it for yourself, or the audio I listened to is included free for those who are Audible Plus members. If you are not a member, and would like to listen, I would be delighted to send it to you as a gift. Just let me know if you would like me to do so.
A Christmas Carol: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry
Narrated by: Tim Curry
And here are two modern, real-person stories of people who are living the message I am trying to convey (the web sites they are on have many more):
https://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=4979
https://www.movedbylove.org/profiles/story.php?sid=10
And, if you would like more videos, music, and stories along similar themes during this season, here are four previous emails that contain many links:
Thanksgiving 2019
https://ameaningfullife.org/thankfulness/
Christmas 2019
https://ameaningfullife.org/the-meaning-of-christmas/
Holidays 2020
https://ameaningfullife.org/uncategorized/beyond-the-darkness/
Thanksgiving 2021
https://ameaningfullife.org/uncategorized/thanksgiving-2021/
May you have a wonderful Holiday Season!
David