Kindness and the Magical Equation

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness" - Dalai Lama

This is one of my favourite quotes in the whole world. These days I had new opportunities to think about the extraordinary gift of kindness and the miracles it can do for our lives.

I have come to believe that all people are fundamentally good. You don't need to agree with me - I am aware this is a very controversial topic - but it is my model of the world and I choose to share it with you here. I believe we all have light inside of us and we are all capable of amazing things. We are all absolutely wonderful in the beginning, as any adult looking at a small child can easily notice.

What happens later on? How do we become embittered, egoistical, cruel, depressed, aggressive, victimised, dependant, demanding, judgemental, impatient, jealous, unforgiving and unloving of ourselves and of others?

Where do all these states and feelings come from? It is obvious they don't make us happy, it is clear as daylight they destroy relationships, families, self-esteems and yet we bring them into our lives and perpetuate them for years, sometimes for a whole lifetime. We end up hurting ourselves and those we love. We end up angry and lonely and wondering why life can't be easier. Yet we are blinded to the fact that it is us, and nobody else, making our own lives hard.

Our disappointment in others in nothing but a reflection of our disappointment in ourselves. Our anger and judgement against others is, in the end, just the shadow of our anger and judgement against our own faults, mistakes and perceived weaknesses. 

It is my belief that it all starts with parents projecting their own unsolved emotional issues on their children. It all starts with an adult caught up in what psychologists call "the drama triangle" and I personally call "the dreaded triangle". It is the triad of roles most adults tend to adopt in different situations in their lives - persecutor (or aggressor)/ victim/ saviour. 

Our parents were likely caught up in this loop one way or another, simply because their parents had thrown them in it and they, as adults, were not aware of this, nor did they know how to get out. So they passed on their "emotional inheritance" to us. Their dreams of who we were supposed to become, their fears, their limiting beliefs about what was right/wrong/good/bad for us, their own unfulfilled emotional needs which made them give us love and then reproach that we didn't give them back enough - all these became our legacy.  They strived to save us from whatever they perceived as being dangerous to us and if we protested they would become aggressors, forcing us to accept their view of the world, or victims, accusing us of not being grateful/good/smart/attentive enough and complaining about all they have "invested" in us.

This is not necessarily the pattern of every family, but one way or another I've seen some version of this everywhere around me - we all have or had some issue or another with our caregivers, and if we, by some miracle, have no issues with them, we are very likely to have some issues with the circumstances of our lives, which were never good/favourable/lucky enough.

But here comes the problem and the mistake most of us make.

We don't take responsibility for our own lives! We don't stop to look at the emotional inheritance we have received and think: What good can I do with this? How does this make me a better person? What lessons can I draw from this to become wiser and happier? How can I forgive them for whatever they did wrong and offer myself the gift of making things right in my own life now?

cause effect poster

There is this magical equation of life that most of us get wrong: Cause versus Effect. 

Living at "effect" means perpetually blaming your problems on someone else - parents, friends, society, bad luck. Living at "effect" literally means believing we are the receivers of good or bad circumstances, we are at fate's mercy. Something or somebody else is always the cause of our problems. Seldom do we stop to think how comfortable this actually is.

Not taking responsibility, considering ourselves victims of life also gives us the excuse to take the easy way out - find reasons/excuses/stories that justify whatever we DON'T do to fix our lives. We cover up our lack of courage, our fear, our guilt by building huge walls made up of self-justification. If only our parents had made fewer mistakes, if only our children didn't disappoint us, if only we had more money or a better job or more loyal friends... then we would be happy. Or would we?

What if, instead of perpetually complaining, we'd take full responsibility? What if we moved from "effect" to "cause"? What if we started to think that NOW, as adults, WE are responsible for the way we handle whatever happens in our lives? Instead of perpetually asking "WHY did this happen?" we might start asking "HOW can I make this work?". Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we might just choose to be happy now. What then? How would our life be different?

I know more and more people, myself included, who have slowly started moving from "effect" to "cause" in their lives. Most of them have seen their lives changing for the better in almost miraculous ways. I too am one of them.

Things that used to hurt me now make me wonder: "How can I learn from this?". People who used to annoy me have become my teachers. And kindness has indeed become my religion.

I choose to treat myself with kindness and others too, in any way I can. I am far from perfect, I make plenty of mistakes every single day, yet, unlike in the past, I take responsibility for them and their consequences. I no longer blame others for who I am or am not. I view my imperfections as opportunities for growth. I understand that, when others do me wrong, it is only because they have not yet moved at "cause", they have not yet discovered that they are responsible for what happens to them and still feel the need to blame or punish others for whatever upsets them. I choose to respond with kindness whenever I can, instead of anger or hurt. And when I do get angry or intolerant, I tend find fewer excuses for my behaviour and take more responsibility than I used to. Others CANNOT make me angry, I CHOOSE to get angry. This means I can CHOOSE to be kind to them and to myself too.

Kindness and living at "cause" are, for me, two important ingredients of a happy life.

They have allowed me to be more honest without being aggressive, to be more forgiving without making unnecessary compromises, to make some very difficult decisions in my life and accept that I cannot make everyone happy all the time and they have also helped me understand that my views of the world are not absolute truths, just my own truths, and to stop trying to impose them on anyone.

I choose to share this with you today to perhaps make you think of a different perspective.

Where are you in your life? Are you at "cause" or at "effect"?

Are you being kind to yourself and others?

What lessons have you learnt from the good and the bad in your past? How did it make you stronger, better, wiser?

How can you confront the anger, fear, sadness, hurt and guilt in your life and turn them into something positive, something that will propel you further instead of holding you back?