Thursday 18 August 2016

Global Horrors and Good People

Summary: There are some really shitty, discouraging things that happen in our world. I wonder whether there is something that we might to do not only remain afloat but to make a change. I suspect that a lot of this comes from small, intentional acts of love.


Last week in Krakow, Poland I visited the Auschwitz Memorial/Museum. 

"arbeit macht frei" ["work sets you free"]

It was a deeply emotional experience for me which was of course, in many ways, expected. (As a friend pointed out to me, it would be sociopathic to be reminded/confronted with such a deep form of mass suffering and not feel emotionally moved.) But it also provoked some unexpected thoughts. One such thought was realising that what scares me the most about global horrors like the WW2 Holocaust is not actually the people like Hitler (…or, in different geo/cultural contexts: Joseph Kony, or Trump, or Mugabe, or countless others…) who spew hatred and encourage discrimination and call people to violence. 


place where night guard sat watch over the camp

To be sure, Hitler spewed hatred and is often attributed with the violence that ensued during the reign of Nazi Germany .  But it’s also the people who stood behind him, or around him—the people who couldn’t be bothered to stand in his way—which allowed the many horrors to take place. And it’s the societies which formed the structures that allowed him to stand up strong and high—rather than collectively deciding he ought to be blocked, or toppled over—which seem equally horrific. 



This really scares me.



I don’t know anyone (myself certainly included here) who is consistently kind and compassionate without any faults or shortcomings: we’re all human and we make mistakes and have moments where we are mean or unkind or disinterested. And this is probably okay and should certainly be expected.  But this becomes scary when either (a) individuals become more driven by cruelty and selfishness than by kindness and selflessness; or (b) societies/groups of individuals choose to sit back and let cruelties happen around them. 

barbed wire walls around the camp

There are always good people—throughout corners of our world—who stand up and do whatever is in their power to put an end to the horrors they see unfolding around them. There are always good people; I am convinced of this. There are a number of times I have witnessed or experienced complete strangers stand up and do something thoughtful/loving for someone who was being wronged. These experiences are life-giving. 

The Auschwitz memorial museum wrote out the story of a man who offered his life for another prisoner who had been sentenced to death. It told of the number of individuals who risked (and sometimes lost) their lives and their family’s lives in order to feed/house/protect a neighbour, a friend, or even a stranger. Many did intentional acts of goodness even if this came at a cost to their own well being. Jesus was like this. Gandhi...Aung San Suu Kyi…. Mother Theresa… Nelson Mandela…. Malala….  The nameless woman who I saw the other week helping a homeless man… People who stand in active solidarity with the marginalised or oppressed-----there are plenty such people—of all ages, and from all cultural/religious backgrounds. 

one of many photos of individuals who perished at the camps;
I find this photo of this gentleman to be particularly striking.

And yet in this very same breath it can sometimes seem so easy to be overwhelmed by the horror and the cruelty of humans—both on a global and local scale. The state of our world really does break me sometimes. And in these moments it becomes difficult to focus on (and cultivate, and contribute to) the people who do loving things.

I need to remind myself—probably every day—that love is ultimately stronger than cruelty.

And there are PLENTY of opportunities in our current-day affairs to respond with kindness, goodness, love, etc. (And, perhaps we even ought to take a rather strong stand against people or systems that we think go against these values.) Unfortunately, we don’t have to look far to see injustices—some are already in full swing; some are piling up like a dam about to burst. If you open a newspaper, turn on the TV channel, or even just walk around your city, you will see it. Cruelty abounds. It’s cancerous and pervasive and sometimes it seems to be contagious. 



But, as overwhelming and all-consuming that such cruelties may seem, love is ultimately stronger. It is; it absolutely is. And we have always known that love is stronger; we have always believed it and held to this with conviction. That is why some wars could never be won even when battles were finished; love had simultaneously nullified and transcended them. 

Cemetery attached to the Old Synagogue in Krakow;
Jews partake in the mitzvah (command) of commemorating the deceased
by placing a stone at the burial site
I think that, if we wish to act lovingly and compassionately, we must take a serious look at the circles we inhabit—our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, our countries, our online communities, other spheres of influence, etc.—and see if there are small or large injustices or cruelties that we might take a stand against. And/or, we might see if there are ways that we can bring love, compassion, joy, hope, grace, etc. into the lives of those who need it. (Which is probably all of us.)

outer wall of the Jewish cemetery attached to the Old Synagogue in Krakow

I quite like this quote by Gandhi—he refers to it as his ‘talisman’—I’ll end with it:

" Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
- Source: Mahatma Gandhi [Last Phase, Vol. II (1958), P. 65]


p.s. This is a beautiful song about love and forgiveness, written by my friend Karis Taylor.

Wednesday 3 August 2016

Goals and Prioritising + and Living Meaningfully

What are your goals for this next 12 months? (Is that a question you ever ask yourself?)

It’s a question I ask myself a lot—in various forms/time-lines. In fact, I am willing to entertain the possibility that I just may be too Type-A/task-driven ;).   I make goals for what I want to do on that particular day (or in that particular 50-minute period) and I usually also have a ~7 day, ~3 month, ~12 month, and ~3 year list of to-dos/goals either pinned to my bulletin board or just floating around somewhere in my mind. I feel immensely more calm when I have some sort of plan—preferably written out in a spreadsheet with colour-coding and hyperlinks J. I really like having a sense of where I might head, even if past experience has shown me that that almost always changes.

Now, I’m about to go to India for approximately one year of fieldwork (focused on interreligious relations and based at an ashram.) And, now knowing this ^ about my goal-orientedness, you can appreciate my feelings of chaos when the ashram estate manager informed me “you can come and stay for 2-3 months, but after that let’s see.” I felt like I was treading water and a big wave splashed me in the face; I gasped and choked a little bit.

At present, I plan to be in India for ~11 months. How was I to cope with this “stay for 2-3 months and then we’ll see”? If I wasn’t going to remain at that place, I wanted to at least write down on a piece of colour-coded paper where I thought I’d be for the remaining months.

And so, my type-A brain is doing the next-best thing. I am planning not WHERE I want to be for the next 12 months, but WHO I want to be. Another way of conceptualising this has been: what do I want to get out of the next 12 months? Yet another way has been: what do I want to focus my energy on and contribute to during the next 12 months?


Who do you want to be (or, perhaps, to become) in the next 12 months? (Is that a question you ever ask yourself?)



I continue to ask these sorts of questions while preparing to head to India because, over my multiple trips to India in the past ~4 years, India has become a place where I have allowed myself to explore these questions in a very real way. Of course, I pose them in other places too, but I seem to pose them especially whilst out of my "regular" routine--and a lot of this has happened to be in India.

Evening aarti on the Ganges river in Varanasi


I think these are important questions to think through. (And so I’ve made a list and colour coded them.) Just kidding. Or am I?

Here are some of the things I want to spend my time doing. (And yes, I note they are still in the form of a to-do list. You can’t completely strip me of my organisational tendencies..)

- learn Hindi
- try to play an Indian classical instrument. Maybe the sarod.
- be happy
- be involved in the community I find myself in
- gather enough data to write a good PhD thesis
- don't become consumed by getting enough data to write a good PhD thesis
- sketch and draw
- meditate lots
- learn to record good audio (my own songs? Bhakti bhajans?)
- become better at video shooting and editing; make short videos about life in the ashram and life in india
- live simply and sustainably (maybe get involved with some community-kitchen projects, or agriculture)
- appreciate small things; say ‘thank you’ more often
- become less judgmental and more compassionate
- learn local ways of doing things (sewing? agriculture? cooking?) that I do not currently know
- learn what people outside of academia think about God/religion/interreligious relations
- practice communicating my thoughts on ^ for people inside and outside of academia
- spend time outdoors; go hiking
- write poetry
- find creative ways to enter [non-academic] discussions about what it means to live meaningfully
- learn more about who/what God is

Sunshine in Croatia


Of course I do realise that some of these are a bit more ambiguous than others are…

Broadly speaking, I find that, all too readily, I become stressed out about planning details and striving for goals that—in the grand scheme of things—don’t really matter all that much. For example, writing my PhD thesis: this is a good and admirable goal, and I intend to focus on content that I think is important for a number of reasons…but as soon as this particular goal takes over my ability to be a loving friend/family member, a kind neighbour, or a compassionate stranger, I think I have to seriously question whether I have my priorities straight.

This is difficult because, for the most part, we live in societies that are career/results-driven. At least in my experience, careers (and steps towards improving our careers) are the one thing that people are almost bound to congratulate others on.

I had a sort-of “aha!” moment in this regard when I was accepted for my PhD. Around the same time, a friend of mine (who is extremely intelligent and could certainly have gone on to do a PhD had she wanted to) decided to take a short-term contract position. At this same time, she also chose to put off any imminent plan of doing a PhD so that she and her husband could start their family without worrying about PhD stresses. People congratulated me on my PhD. And people congratulated her on her contract work. But a number of people asked her why she wasn’t doing a PhD, and I think very few (if any) congratulated her on her decision to devote her time and energy to her future-kids, to her marriage, and to all the other ways she was now able to volunteer within her community.  Why is this?

Why is it that we automatically congratulate and praise things associated with “measurable intelligence” and (presumably) pay-checks, but we rarely think to congratulate or praise people who have chosen to live in a way that leaves a small carbon footprint, or who grow their own vegetables, or who volunteer at the soup kitchen, or who do any number of other things that are inarguable examples of love for their community around them and/or for the world in which we live.

Rocks and rivers in Vancouver, Canada


Priorities change with opportunities, and this is inexorably wrapped up in priviledge. I recognise that, and I recognise that I'm not addressing that here. But, with the opportunities (and yes, the priviledges and Priviledge) that I have, I think I must seriously question whether I am using my time, energies, and passion well. Am I choosing to live in ways that grow me into a more loving and compassionate person? Am I choosing things that make me happy---and doing so in a way that does not abuse or hurt others--rather than choosing things that make me (in the eyes of some) "successful"? What might our world look like if we all strived to become more focused on love, compassion, and service to others rather than on success, prestige, and wealth? (I've written out some thoughts on a related topic here)

All this to say, I want to keep my priorities in check. And I want to be someone whose schedule and goals reflects their theoretical priorities. And I want to be someone who tries to praise and encourage others who engage in intentional acts of loving kindness. How about you, who/what do you want to be? As always, feel free to comment below or PM me.