It’s funny that the title of this post is “It Can Be Gentle” when this week has been anything but. It wasn’t quite a Murphy’s Law week where everything that could go wrong did, but everything that could veer off course before redirecting did. For instance, my computer lost the first draft of this blog, checks are delayed, and oh yeah, I’ve had a searing headache for 48 hours which has literally never happened to me before.
When things in my life go awry, I want to exert force and make. them. better. I am the opposite of gentle, which for the record means quiet, docile, and soft. I am the person who screamed at the top of her lungs “Eff you!” when my family’s rental car window was bashed in a couple of years ago. I don’t need a microphone to be heard in the back of a room. What I’m saying is gentleness doesn’t come naturally to me unless I’m dealing with small children or animals. When it comes to the default way I treat myself, it’s not gentle.
So cute! So gentle! Photo by Anya Chernik on Unsplash
It’s probably for this reason that my first eating disorder sponsor repeatedly asked me, “How can you be gentle with yourself?” I hated when he asked me that because I didn’t want to be gentle! Gentleness was too slow and I wanted results immediately! At this point you might be thinking, “Yeah but remember the tortoise and the hare? You can win a race if you’re slow and steady.” However, I’d argue even slow and steady is not the same thing as gentle.
The advice when it comes to writing is that you should do it every day. “Make space for the muse to emerge,” and all that. We glorify consistency but is that really gentle? There are some days I can’t work on my novel, or rather, I choose not to because I’m overtired or I have a headache or my brain isn’t functioning. The “slow and steady” method would tell me to write for five minutes anyway. The gentle method would say, “It’s OK to take a break.”
I don’t always believe that. I feel guilty when I don’t write but there’s wisdom in the question from my first sponsor because not being gentle with myself is how I wound up in recovery for compulsive eating and exercising. Not being gentle with myself was a recipe for burnout, resentment, and frankly, misery. I’ve had enough misery and there’s always something to be miserable about but I’d rather not fan that flame. My last couple of posts have been about happiness because that’s what I want for myself and others. I want us to be happy not because we stumbled into Shangri-La but because we’re taking care of ourselves and each other. In a culture that lionizes force, let’s instead be gentle.
I dream of a world where we remember there’s a place for gentleness. A world where we understand slow and steady isn’t the same as gentleness. A world where we let ourselves take breaks when we need them without guilt. A world where we treat ourselves with care and remember it can be gentle.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I realize Juneteenth has come and gone but I keep thinking about an article I read by Robin Washington where he said Juneteenth has been whitewashed. The tale we’ve been told is Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865 to inform enslaved African Americans they were free. As if they didn’t already know. However, historian Gregory P. Downs has firsthand accounts from people demonstrating they did know. Galveston’s Blacks knew they were free and so did their slaveholders, who nonetheless kept them in bondage using brute force.
That means General Gordon Granger didn’t read off from a scroll and let slaves know they were liberated. No, Granger and his soldiers let the slaveholders know the slaves were liberated – at the barrel of a gun. They used force to say, “Let these people go.”
One of the reasons this article has stuck with me is because it illustrates what motivates people to change. So often I think we as a society want to believe that if people only knew the truth, they would change out of the goodness of their hearts. If people only knew that by purchasing products made with palm oil, such as shampoo, cookies, peanut butter, microwave dinners, and more, they are contributing to the extinction of orangutans, they’d stop. (Side note: Palm oil has many names like “stearic acid” and “sodium lauryl sulphate” so it could be hiding in your products and you wouldn’t know.) And it’s true that sometimes informing people does move them enough to change their behavior.
Will you help the orangutans? Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash
For instance, a friend of mine became vegan after watching a couple of documentaries. Up until that point, she didn’t put it together cows are raped and separated from their young in order to produce milk. She didn’t think about how cows, pigs, and chickens have personalities and consciousness like her dog does. She didn’t know the animals she ate screamed out in pain as they were slaughtered. But when she learned more, she changed her eating habits. However, not everyone is like my friend.
Some people know the truth and are still unwilling to change because it’s too hard, too complicated, too whatever. Some people, like the Civil War era Galveston slaveholders, will maintain the status quo until someone else forces them to change.
I think that’s why my spiritual teacher is not a pacifist. He says, “In all actions of life whether small or big, the unit mind progresses by winning over the opposing trends. Life develops through the medium of force.” Later on, he says, “In the absence of the ability to resist evil and also in the absence of an effort to acquire such ability, declaring oneself to be nonviolent with the purpose of not admitting all these weaknesses before the opponent may serve a political end, but it will not protect the sanctity of righteousness.”
My spiritual teacher cares about protecting the sanctity of righteousness, about making life better for everyone, and so do I. Does that happen sometimes through petitions, boycotts, and protests? Yes, absolutely. But sometimes that also happens at the barrel of a gun and I think it’s important for us to recognize that. I’m not encouraging everyone to go out and buy a gun, rather I’m saying force has its place in the world, if it’s used wisely and used for the benefit of all.
I dream of a world where we understand what motivates people to change. A world where we recognize sometimes learning the truth is not enough. A world where we realize force has its place in society and sometimes it’s necessary to employ force in order to create a world we wish to see.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Whenever life becomes challenging, my first impulse is to flee. Maybe it’s because I’m a Sagittarius. I read a meme recently where Sags described having to-go bags packed at all times “just in case.” They are ready to jet off somewhere at the drop of a hat. I don’t have a literal to-go bag, but I do have a figurative one.
As soon as I encounter a difficult situation, I fantasize about moving to Europe, or back in with my parents, or at the very least hiding under my bedcovers. The universe though is the best and worst kind of parent because instead of allowing me to run away from experiences, it forces me to confront them.
Several years ago when I had an extreme sensitivity to noise, I moved from place to place looking for my quiet, peaceful Shangri-La. It’s a little more complicated than that because some of my housing situations turned sour and necessitated I leave, but in essence I searched and searched for a great place to live. I even went so far as to move to the middle of nowhere Missouri, but even there I was plagued by noise.
If you know yoga, you’ll get the joke — this person is performing warrior pose. Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash
What finally squelched the problem is I built up my warrior self. I stopped turning into a meek mouse when I heard loud music. I stopped covering my ears wishing I could escape to somewhere else. To be fully transparent, all along I confronted people, telling them to turn down their music. I called the cops on my neighbor multiple times to complain about noise. I did all the things people told me to do, but the music kept playing.
On some level I think people didn’t respect me when I knocked on their door and said, “Turn down your music,” because they sensed I didn’t have any bite to back up my bark. They could tell if they pushed even a little I’d cower in fear and turn into a victim. Through therapy I have learned to hold my ground, to say no and mean it not only with my words, but with my vibration, and that’s when the music stopped.
Not turning into a victim is a lesson I continue to learn because it’s still my first impulse. Not being a victim is something supported by my spiritual teacher who wants me to be brave and to fight. He said, “Life is fight. Life is the constant fight against belligerent forces.” Later on he said, “No one can be victorious without fight: Victory without struggle is unthinkable.”
That means there’s no easy way out. That means I can’t hide under my covers and pretend things aren’t happening. It means I’ll never be victorious if I keep withdrawing from the world, thinking I can escape life’s problems. The hard truth is there’s no escape. The sooner I remember that, the easier life will be.
I dream of a world where we recognize we can’t run away from our problems. A world where we realize we have to stay and fight the hard battles. A world where we assert ourselves with strength and determination embodying our inner warriors.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.