Let Me Be Gentle With You

We live in a rash world, a fast-paced world of much movement, often harsh. We have millions of pieces of information coming at us at lightening speed, and most of it with an ulterior motive (i.e. buy this!), in jam-packed action and stress filled days - and there is precious little room for gentleness.

And yet, in the thick of life as we know - learning to be gentle is invaluable, and possibly there is nothing more powerful. Anyone can stand up and roar - but how many of us can bring on gentle in midst of the constant roars surrounding us?

It's actually kind of a stunning concept, too. When you take the word gentle and roll it around your tongue, it has a completely unique and almost foreign feel to it. Gentle - hmmm. Just imagine the difference between slamming your fist down on the table and softly touching the surface of the table. The one is painful, loud, booming, assertive. The other is soft, quiet, receptive, sensuous.

All of life is like this. Our every word is either a slam or a gentle stroke. Our actions are going to fall into one or the other categories. Even our thoughts. It is so easy to suck in all that slamming energy into our thoughts, but what if you take in the other instead? What if you were just gentle with your thoughts. Instead of judgment, blame, anger, perhaps equanimity, softness, kindness, understanding.

Joni Mitchell once sang, "I can be cruel too, oh but let me be gentle with you." Isn't all of life like this? In every moment we can choose to be cruel (i.e. slamming) or we can choose to be gentle. And above all else, we can choose to be gentle with ourselves and the people closest to us, the ones we love. What kind of world will you choose?


Blessings.
- Darshan







© 2010 Darshan F Jessop