I'm writing a second blog post this week to share with the Wisdom Bloggers Sisterhood in response to recent events in the world. We have decided to flood the site this week with positive messages of hope and peace as our way of spreading these truths and energies around the world.
I woke up yesterday morning determined to sit down and write this post, determined to make yesterday a beautiful, bountiful, peace-filled day. Then the phone rang. My adult daughter was on the other end of the line in tears... someone had broken into their house while they were sleeping and robbed them. All of my good feelings and "give peace a chance" intentions went right out of the window! How dare someone do that to my family? How dare they scare my grandchildren like that? How dare they invade the sanctity of my daughter's home? I was beyond angry. If I'd had the perpetrators in front of me, I'd probably have gotten myself arrested!
As the day progressed and I sat waiting for updates from her, I mindlessly scrolled down Facebook reading all of the messages of love and hope, and little by little I started to realize what I had done, or, more accurately, what I had failed to do: I had failed to beat them at their own game. I had bought into the fear and hatred and had come up all the poorer for it. No one had gotten hurt. Something spooked them off before they got much more than my daughter's purse. It would entail hours and hours of phone calls to cancel bank and credit cards, and a trip to DMV to get a new license, but everyone was safe.
It's one thing to chant peace slogans when it's not happening to you. It's quite another when your life has taken a hit like that. For a while I let all the "what ifs" take over my imagination until I had to go outside and walk it off before I lost my mind. Standing in the beautiful autumn sunshine, listening to the cows on the farm next door, I felt a shift take place. Hatred left and gratitude took its place. Hatred can't win if we refuse to hate back. The bad guys lose if we refuse to stop forgiving them. If the ones who robbed my daughter were that hard up, how awful for them. If they were hopped up on drugs, I pray for an end to their pain. Love wins, Love always wins. It always has and it always will, and that's what some folks in the world just don't get.
We've got to walk our talk. Sure, we can't just sit by and open our doors to the terror and hatred, but we can surround our lives with love, and forgiveness, and compassion, and peace. We've got to be the light in the darkness, the ones who show others the way. We ARE the world, corny as that may sound. So what talk will you walk out into the world today?
Barb, I agree. When faced with what's going on in the world - Beirut and Paris, as well as things near and dear to our hearts - it's hard to stand firm and walk our talk. I found myself angrily writing in my journal after the Paris attacks. My immediate reaction was "oh he!! no!" Writing helped. Journaling what I was feeling in that moment helped. But the best thing I did was show up Sunday morning and guide yoga nidra meditation. Not only did it help my students, but it helped me as well. More than I thought it would. <3
ReplyDeleteI don't know what I'd do it I didn't journal - lose my sanity, I think!
DeleteBarb, This is such a great post and a wonderful way to draw these big, abstract lessons down into the specifics of life. It is such a gift to transform a negative into a positive, which is what you did, in so many ways, in this beautiful post! xox, Reba
ReplyDeleteI always tell my kids: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Thanks for the kind words.
DeleteBarb I thoroughly enjoyed your post and it was ironic that as you say down to write your daughter and family were threatened. It isn't easy to keep love and kindness at the forefront when these things happen so how you turned it around to a positive was an inspiration. I'm part of the Wisdom Bloggers Sisterhood
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words Being human isn't always a walk in the park. Sometimes we have to push through the thorny bushes to get to the grass! Nice to meet you fellow blogging sister!
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