This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people . . . (Walt Whitman)
Wholeness is the goal, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. (Parker Palmer)
My Bookbub tells me there is a new bestseller out there that I might wanna read, entitled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k. The title reminded me of one of my own more shadowy parts that I named Yummygas, an acronym for the descriptive phrase, “You Have Obviously Mistaken Me for Someone Who Gives a S**t.” Humph. And here if I had gone public with all that shadowy wisdom, I could’ve maybe had a bestseller on my hands. There ain’t no justice; not only do I have to put up with that part of myself, but I don’t get to make a profit from her.
I know where that part of myself originated. It grew because somehow I had to defend and protect myself from caring too much, from having crummy boundaries as a result of a bleeding heart, from being so easily hurt that I could never effectively be of help. She (Yummygas) doesn’t have the need to crop up so often these days, unless I get really incensed over some injustice or another and feel helpless about being able to change it. Then my inner hero wants to charge forth on her white horse to save the day, and Yummygas immediately rears her head, saying something like, “Are you crazy? That never works!”
I’ve learned over the years that I am both — both the hero on the white horse, and Yummygas. I am my shadow as well as my light. The reality is that light casts a shadow, and I have to be wary of living too fully into either of those parts of myself because one doesn’t come without the other. And that’s okay. I’ve learned that I can’t really fix, help, or heal anyone — in even using those words, I’m seeing the other person as the broken one, and me bigger and better, and able to somehow magically see what that person needs. In trying to make things better, sometimes I’ve just made them worse.
What I can do is show up, be present, and attempt, at least, to practice loving-kindness as a way of life, not just to others, but to myself. And I’ve learned that what shows up at my door is mine to attend to, whether it’s a feral cat who’s gonna need some care, or a request from a friend to borrow a car, or a meal to prepare.
The day we stop caring or showing we are human is not gonna be a good day for any of us. As a credo for living, there’s a little poem by Kent Keith that kinda says it all:
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.