Spend more time valuing gentleness and harmony

posted 06:07 AM 09/17
Link this article here.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."

Socrates

Socrates said this somewhat more than 2,400 years ago and so far it has remained true, at least among people fond of thinking. I don't worry about those folks. It's the people who seem to think that the converse is true, that an examined life is not worth living, who make me fret.

Since age 16, most of my life has been spent in painful self-examination. It's the basis for any personal growth I have managed since then. And while I am hardly there yet, I've made progress, or so my beloveds have told me (occasionally with no small amount of relief).

Nothing I have ever done has been more painful, more difficult or more necessary.

So I am utterly bemused at all the people I find who believe that introspection is a ridiculous waste of time. They want what they want when they want it. They don't much care what the consequences are — most often to the rest of us but often enough even to themselves.

In all the time I have spent observing this world, the one thing I have learned is that all humans — individually and collectively — have work to do. Does anybody really think this world is fine as is? Do we really feel we are taking the best of all possible care of this exquisite and amazing planet? Do we really think that the way we are as humans has been refined to its peak of perfection?

In fact, the amount of work we all have to do is pretty staggering, but it isn't actually undoable as long as we start somewhere and get to work on it.

One place we could start is by trying to base our choices and behaviors on simple kindness. It's a small concept, but extrapolated out to its largest scale, it is a profoundly effective place to begin.

Have a decision? Examine your options and choose kindness. Need to speak to someone? How kindly can we do it? Have something to buy? How kind is it to the earth? Whatever our stances on the environment and global warming may be, what harm is there in walking as gently as we can on the planet?

This goes as far as we care to take it. Do our politicians take into account kindness when making policies? Are their decisions based on good ethics or greed and madness for power? Do we as a nation value essential goodness when we deal internationally?

We are certainly not the only nation with work to do. Every culture has things to teach, even as it has plenty to learn. The idea of a perfect culture is a myth.

Kindness is not conformity, either. It is unkind to expect everybody to be devoid of individuality in order to create harmony. True harmony is achieved in a kindness-based culture that still values the true nature of diversity, which is that we are all unique.

It is time for a cultural shift. It is time for us to value gentleness and harmony and kindness in our culture, because that is power within us. And power within trumps power-over every time.

Maya North, a member of The Olympian's Board of Contributors, has gone from street kid to bachelor's degree; welfare mom to computer programmer with the Department of Labor and Industries. She can be reached at MayaNorth@gmail.com.

Mentally ill people fight unseen battles — and win

posted 06:33 AM 06/25

Every day she comes to work and every day she fights the terror that chokes off her air and covers her in a cold sweat. Still, she sits at her desk and does her work and you don't know the battle she's fighting. She has learned to hide it.

We have a war of true survival on our hands

posted 06:51 AM 04/02

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