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Be kind
Bridget Walsh on 10 September, 2011 |

The fundamental ideals of yoga, beyond physical practice, involve living a life of peace, compassion and contentment. While it’s unlikely that the whole world will start picking up a regular Hatha practice and contribute by proxy to world peace, positive attitude shifts of even the smallest increment could help us snowball into a place where corruption and capitalism aren’t always the boss of everything.

Yoga was a natural progression for me, because I already strive to make decisions in my life journey to be kind, compassionate and empathetic, and do what I can to improve the lives of those I love and others around me. I make an effort to learn and take in what people have to say, whether it’s my friends, my family, my colleagues, or other knowledgeable people in the community, like scholars, speakers or authors.

For those of you literary types, I apologise that it has taken me so many years of reading to discover Kurt Vonnegut. Although he passed away in 2007, he left a legacy of written treasures for us to discover. He is an author who writes with a careful blend of realism, cynicism and humour, enough to hold a mirror up to society without condemning us all for our inadequacies (though let’s be honest, we do collectively have a lot to be condemned for).

I’ve recently read three of Kurt’s books: Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5, and A Man Without a Country. He continues to strike chords for me with every page I turn. I could quote him ‘til the cows come home, with his wise turn of phrase and satirical social criticism, drawing parallels between how the world is, and how the world should be. Here is one of my favourite excerpts. It’s from ‘A Man Without a Country’ (2007), described by the Daily Telegraph as “'Part memoir, part rant and part joke.”

“Joe, a young man from Pittsburg came up to me with one request: “Please tell me it will all be okay.”
‘Welcome to Earth, young man,” I said. “It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind!’”

People are generally greedy, lazy, selfish. I don’t understand how we all sleep at night, frankly. When you think about politics, laws, capitalism… One could argue that they are really just a whole lot of rules and red tape protecting what society has led people to believe is their ‘right’ to exist this way.

Ever the idealist, I like to believe that we are intrinsically hard wired for kindness, empathy, compassion. The Yogic philosophies about the Self and our true identity supports this notion. But somewhere along the way it is conditioned out of us in some capacity. Nature and Nurture compete and our sub conscious traits of the True Self start to become overshadowed by our new conscious desires. If we could only re-train our conscious to think a little more about others, be they members of our family, our community, a different species, a different race over the other side of the world... well, it would really go a long way in solving the world’s problems.

Goddamn it, people, we’ve got to be kind!