Kindness & Compassion

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

                                               Plato

During the past 8 years I have grown accustomed to living alone, traveling alone, eating alone and simply embracing my aloneness. Overall, it has been good.

Though, of course, there are times of doubts and loneliness when the mind, the belief system takes over and comes back up to gnaw at me that “You're alone and blah, blah, blah...” Remember your mother's words of wisdom “You're nothing without a man; and nobody without money.” Do the early beliefs formed in our family of origin ever totally leave us. My experience is “absolutely not.” They come back to haunt us at moments of vulnerability. When this happens, I find myself falling into the sludge of darkness.

I used to do all I could to get out of it. Now I ride the wave with kindness and compassion toward myself. Telling myself “It doesn't feel good and that's okay. This, too, will pass.” And, it does until the next time.

Age has brought increased kindness and compassion toward myself allowing me to be wherever I am knowing that I, like each of us, is doing the best we can given our circumstances and our state of mind. Kindness and compassion toward myself and others is my measure of where I'm at. And, the truth is I don't always measure up. Yet, when I don't – it is a blatant reminder that more self-kindness and more self-compassion is needed.

So, until next time, may you be bathed in kindness and compassion...

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