Happy Easter everyone! I hope yours is healthier than mine! I have been confined to quarters these past five days. Being a holiday weekend I, of course, got sick. It has been my pattern since I was a child; Mum has photos of me at various holiday destinations, even as a baby, very much unwell.
Easter already. I cannot believe we’re three months into the new year already! I figure its time to have a look at how the kindness thing is going. (you can read the first post about this year’s word here)
So far this year I have discovered that it is much easier to be kind to other people than to be kind to myself. It is easier to advise friends to stop and rest and let the housework slide when they are unwell than it is for me to do the same. It is easier to take food to a friend or to help with someone’s chores, than to ask for or to accept help myself. Why is it that I do not treat myself with the same kindness that I treat others?
I am having to be kind to myself this weekend, this lurgy has really knocked me down. So, I am resting. I have a lovely smelling candle burning, and soft music playing. I have made a cosy nest to give myself the best chance to recover before its time to go back to work on Tuesday. I hope this kindness to myself flows on to when I am well. Acts of preventative kindness!
On other fronts, I have found it consistently difficult to be kind to people on the road. Sure, it’s easy to let people in, to be aware of others on the road etc, but the moment someone cuts me off, or doesn’t see me and tries to run over me when I’m on the motorbike, or sitting right on my bumper in a huge aggressive four-wheel drive … my inner troll is unleashed. 0-100 in 3 seconds. I get very agitated and sweary. If I check myself and react with kindness to people that make me cranky, they are none the wiser and don’t get any benefit from that, I do. But then, I am not doing it so that they can pat me on the back for being lovely. Strange isn’t it that I benefit and they don’t? My blood pressure remains at a healthy level, and some unsuspecting sucker down the road won’t be subjected to another angry driver (me this time). This can only be a good thing. Who knows, the idiot weaving in and out of traffic and gesticulating for no good reason may be on the way to the hospital to be with his dying parent. He could, of course, just be an idiot, but kindness says to err on the side of cutting him some slack, if only for my benefit. Something to continue practising.
Urban sketching at the National Botanic Gardens a few weeks ago – it was very easy to be kind to the lizards that were playing on the rocks beside me as I sketched!
I continue to plod along with my churches of Canberra calendar project – four down eight to go. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date with the anticipated release information. Here are the most recent two.
St Paul’s in Manuka
St Volodymyr’s in Lyneham
Tell me what you think!