Peace Begins Within: Presence as an Act of Resistance
November 16, 2023
We were having a conversation in our staff meeting this week about the overwhelm of current world situations. Not knowing what to do, how to help, how much to engage before we get overloaded and the fact that it’s a huge privilege to be able to switch off. Many MANY people can’t. Something that stuck out to me is; understanding ourselves well enough to know when we have capacity and when we don’t. I remember during the protests after George Floyds murder, I went to some and not to others. I felt bad as I wanted to go to them all but I just didn’t have the capacity. Understanding that is a luxury in itself.
Not everyone is going to protest. Some people need to stay home and take care of their children. Some people need to go to work and support their families. Some people do what they can do in the communities they live in. Some people donate money, some people are committed to their own inner peace which in turn helps others, and some people work tirelessly on the front lines. There is no one way. But every way is important. It’s helpful to know our limits and to be ok with them. Peace starts inside ourselves and extends outwards. I can’t help anyone from a state of panic and agitation. Robyn our board chair brought this quote to our attention during a meeting last week:
"Tend to the part of the garden you can touch" - Jack Kornfield.
This really spoke to me. It reminds me that sometimes I can’t do anything about what’s out of my reach. I can demonstrate, I can donate to folks on the ground, but the work we do in our community, tending to the needs of those closest to us is ok too. And that is enough, and often the best thing I can do.
Dr Bill Pettit, a teacher in this field was recounting a story sometime ago that gave me an insight into my capacity and where to focus my attention. It is honestly the gift that keeps on giving. He was talking about the time many years prior after his wife had died prematurely. He had two young children at the time and everyone around him was so concerned for the children and wondered how he was going to cope. “You must be so worried about your children growing up without their mother. How will you manage? You must be so worried.” He said, “I love my kids too much to worry about them. They don’t need my worry, they need my presence.”
Something inside me woke to the profundity of what he shared. I thought to myself, that is so true. And then I thought - my life doesn’t need my worry, it needs my presence. The world doesn’t need my worry, it needs my presence. Nobody needs my worry, but my presence is valuable.
I feel like I live by that insight. There could always be so many reasons to worry and be in rage about so many things in this world. Things close to me and things happening on the other side of the world. But I know that worry has never helped anyone ever. It keeps me in my head and out of my life. Being present allows me to tend to the part of the garden I can touch.
It doesn’t mean I’m not going to get in my head and be unbelievably sad and overwhelmed and angry at times, but I just know not to stay there. I know that space doesn’t produce feelings that I want to live in or feelings that allow me to be present to the world right at my feet. Sometimes I have capacity to engage with the news and all the madness that’s happening and sometimes I don’t have the capacity to as much as I’d like and that’s ok too.
“When you give another human being, your family, or your community, the fullness of your being at any moment, a little is enough. When you give them half it, because you’re time binding with your mind, there is never enough. You being to hear the secret that being fully in the present moment is the greatest gift you can to each situation”. Ram Dass