“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…then yours is the earth and everything in it.” Rudyard Kipling

The post Triumph and Disaster appeared first on Dr Benna Sherman.

“The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment.  The challenges we face, the choices we make, the places we go, and the work that we do all become occasions for opening to the life we are actually living and the life that is ours to live if we show up fully and pay attention.  You could say life itself is the meditation teacher, curriculum, and the gift that comes to us through showing up for life in its fullness and meeting it with our fulness….  The risk is that we will sleepwalk through large swaths of our lives on autopilot, unwittingly practicing mindlessness and getting better and better at it, and more and more remote from ourselves and the world: ‘The great escape’….  It is life itself that is the meditation practice, the real arena of mindfulness.  In that spirit, everything and every moment becomes practice and an occasion for waking up….  Wakefulness, as best we can muster it, brought face to face with the human condition itself, this is the challenge of a life lived, and lived fully in the only time we ever get to live or learn or love: This moment, this now.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, passage via Ken Pope, transcribed from a workshop

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
–Gabriel García Marquez, El amor en los tiempos del colera, 1985

It’s simple — The power is in the loop; just keep going around. There is no way to fail. Just keep going around the loop.

Focus on your breath (this is intentional)

De-focus (this is inevitable)

Notice that you’ve drifted from focus (be curious but don’t pursue)

Re-focus (gently but firmly)

Traditionally “Be my Valentine” would be an invitation to a romantic duo. The iconic red heart would be the symbol of this romance.

What if we think about this symbol, the heart, as not being limited to a romantic liaison. What if we think about this heart as being a symbol of love in a broader context.

What if we broaden the whole idea to be one of kindness to others.

Yes, I have just moved for a day to celebrate and practice kindness.

What? You say we don’t need another “silly” holiday? In this February alone, we will have, among many others, Wave all your fingers at your neighbor Day (2/7/19) and Toothache Day (2/9/19).

I would like to suggest that we need a Kindness Day. It seems really obvious to me that a day devoted to love is a perfect day to devote to kindness.

We are living in a cultural environment that has become mean spirited, self-centered, and aggressive. The antidote, of course, is kindness.

I’ve already seen advertised a sweatshirt that says, “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”

There are schools that are recognizing that we need to teach our children from very young the importance that we place on kindness, whether to “foster the positive behavior that creates warm and inclusive school environments,” or “to reduce bullying”.

What better way to teach our children than to model it? And what better way to communicate that it’s important than to assign a whole day to celebrating and demonstrating kindness?

Think about it — we could have whole families making plans for how to celebrate Kindness Day. Maybe it’s to bring in your neighbor’s trash cans or her newspaper. Maybe it’s to take treats over to the dogs across the street, or cookies to the First Responders at your neighborhood Fire or Police station. Maybe it’s to let your little sister play with your Legos or to let your brother play with your PlayDoh.

Let’s think bigger — maybe it’s a day to contact your Senators and Congresspeople to support kindness to an underserved group or to have a fundraiser for something you consider a worthy cause.

There’s already a sweatshirt for it. Let’s add silicone bracelets with hearts on them and the words, “Be kind” and “Happy Kindness Day”.

What if the candy companies added wording to the gift box that said, “Share this”. What if florists sold bunches of flowers designed to be individually given away; what if there was a bunch specially priced specifically to be given away to complete strangers or delivered to people you don’t know who are in the hospital.

I have to share with you that this column has been an awful lot of fun to write. The ideas are just so easy to come up with and they feel so good.

I am very fortunate to have husband, children, grandchildren, and wonderful friends with whom I can share very traditional Valentine’s wishes. But we all have the opportunity to be kind, whether you have a traditional Valentine or if you don’t know a soul. Kindness isn’t and can’t be dependent on someone being important to you. Kindness in its purest form is given without any expectation of recognition or credit and without direct benefit to you.

It can be financially generous or not cost a cent. Find what works for you, and be kind. 

Happy Kindness Day!

It’s a kind of social convention to make New Year’s resolutions. The idea has traditionally been to make a list of how you’re going to improve yourself in the coming year. The follow-up tradition is to break each resolution, typically before March and often before the end of January.

It has become for many, probably most, people an exercise in self-recrimination. Instead of being motivational, it becomes an opportunity to flog yourself for a list of failures.

I’d like to offer some alternatives to this way of starting the new year. 

1. Make a list of things you did in the PAST year that were good or valuable in some way. We’re not looking here for Nobel Peace Prize dimension deeds. This is more along the line of “did you floss regularly”.

Did you help a neighbor in some way? 

Support a local fundraiser? 

Get your flu shot? 

Learn to meditate? Learn to swim? 

Finish a project at home or at work? 

Did you call your mother/father/aunt regularly?

2. Make a list of qualities you have that you value. Again, think small. Small doesn’t mean unimportant. We’re not looking for super powers. This is more along the line of “I’m reliable and show up for work even when I don’t want to.”

Are you persistent? 

Kind to small children? to animals?

Do you never make fun of people who are different?

Are you clean, meaning bathe or shower regularly?

Note— those questions are just to get you thinking. They are NOT meant to give you more things on which to judge yourself harshly.

The point of this alternative New Year’s activity is to be self-affirming, not self-chastising. No one is perfect, no one achieves all of his or her goals. It is good to have aspirations IF they motivate you in your own growth and development. Growth and development is good and healthy and natural. 

Most people do good things all the time but often dismiss them as not worthy of note. Same with dismissing their own positive qualities as not deserving attention. In our culture there is a lot of emphasis on not bragging or being prideful. There’s less of an emphasis on being able to value what you do and who you are. 

There’s a belief held by many people that being hard on yourself will make you a better person. For most people it works the other way. Being hard on yourself, minimizing or dismissing your positives, emphasizing your imperfections, is discouraging and depletes you of the will and energy to grow.

It takes a certain amount of confidence in your ability to succeed in order to try new things, to put yourself out there when there’s any possibility of failure. It takes a certain amount of belief in your own ability to persist in order to be willing to tolerate the discomforts of failure. When we pay attention to what we have already accomplished, it gives us the confidence to attempt something new. When we affirm our own strength or resilience or stubbornness, we have faith in our own ability to tackle something difficult or challenging.

If you really want to make positive changes in the year ahead, first look back. If you want to build a better you, first affirm that you’re already pretty good.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”—Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

“Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”—John Lewis (1940-2020, civil rights activist, in his 2017 memoir, Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

posted by Jill Squyres PhD

9h  · Thanks to my dear friend Alan Goldberg for this lovely #rbg post:

There are a few posts going around reminding folks that since RBG is Jewish, the proper thing to say about her passing is “May her memory be for blessing,” which is true, but I wanted to add a bit of perspective on what that means. Jewish tradition does not focus on the afterlife. There are a few thoughts on what happens when we go, some of which look a bit like reincarnation, and some of which looks like time to reevaluate our actions and relationships on earth, but for the most part, the whole “Do good things, get good reward from God; do bad things, get bad punishment from God” is just not part of our worldview. (Spoiler alert: this is why I love The Good Place so much- the final season feels very in line with Jewish thoughts on the afterlife.)When Jews speak of righteousness, it is never with the idea of an eternal reward. We work to be good humans to others and ourselves because justice and peace are their own rewards. We don’t know what happens next, but we know what happens here, and that is enough. The pursuit of justice is one of the highest callings of Judaism, and it should not be misinterpreted as vengeance or punishment. The ideas of justice and sustainability are inextricably linked in Judaism. A system that is unjust cannot sustain, and a system that is unsustainable cannot be just. It is said that a person who passes on Rosh Hashona is a Tzedek/Tzaddeket, a good and righteous person. When we speak of tzedakah, the word is often translated as “charity” but it is more accurate to say righteousness. Tzedakah can take many forms (including monetary donation) but it’s important to note that tzedakah is not a benevolent contribution given to be kind or nice to those who need it, it is to be viewed as a balancing of the scales, an active working towards justice. To use a simple example, one should donate to the local food bank not to gain favor with God, or to be nice to those with less than ourselves, but because it is unjust for anyone to be without food, especially while others have plenty. Correcting injustice, balancing the scales, evaluating the distribution of power and creating equity is tzedakah, the work of righteousness. Similar to Maslow’s (imperfect) hierarchy of needs, Maimonides wrote in the Middle Ages of eight levels of Tzedakah, the highest of which results in self sufficiency, or rather, an act that creates a sustainable form of justice. “Teaching a man to fish” is an extremely reductionist view of this idea, but it’s a start- the real meat of it is the idea that charity is good, but eliminating the need for charity is better. (i.e. Tax the billionaires so we can have universal healthcare instead of praising the rich for building hospitals with their names on them.) The second highest form is where both the giver and the receiver are unknown to each other. This allows both for the dignity of the recipient, and for the giver to be free from personal motivation and reward. In other words, we should help create a more just world for the benefit of people we don’t know, without the expectation of praise, gratitude, or reward, in this life or the next. When we say that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a tzaddeket (the feminine form of tzaddik) we don’t just mean she was a nice person. What we’re saying is that she was a thoughtful person who worked tirelessly to create a more just world. One that would perpetuate equality and access, one that wasn’t reliant on charity, one that was better for people she did not know, without the expectation of praise or fame. THAT is what it means to be a Tzaddeket, and I can’t think of anyone who better embodies the pursuit of justice. When we say “may her memory be for blessing” the blessing we speak of is not “may we remember her fondly” or “may her memory be a blessing to us” the blessing implied is this: May you be like Ruth. Jewish thought teaches us that when a person dies, it is up to those who bear her memory to keep her goodness alive. We do this by remembering her, we do this by speaking her name, we do this by carrying on her legacy. We do this by continuing to pursue justice, righteousness, sustainability. So when you hear us say “May her memory be for blessing” don’t hear “It’s nice to remember her”– hear “It’s up to us to carry on her legacy.” When you hear us say, “She was a Tzaddeket” don’t hear “She was a nice person”– hear “She was a worker of justice.” May her memory be for blessing. May her memory be for revolution. May we become a credit to her name.

Focus (intentional)

De-focus (inevitable)

Notice (be curious but don’t pursue)

Re-focus (gently but firmly)