The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I was given a copy of this by a dear friend and felt so reminded of these words by my contact on this site. Thank you all for your kindness.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.
Marianne,I love this poem and poet....I had never read the whole thing. This morning I read it and the tears pour......we have known these sorrows...and the kindness...and I struggle with swaying between the two. They can seem so overwhelming in and of themselves...but actually they are the flip side of each other. Then I hear the words of the poem that I posted yesterday...."You do not have to be perfect" ....do I equate kindness with perfection? Why do I feel like I always have to act with kindness? I think I might be getting a little far out there into my thoughts....but your poem triggered me. I am so sorry for what you have lost...for what you feel dissolving. This life is so beautiful and we are given so much that we can always loose....to survive it feels impossible sometimes. And I think it would be impossible..without kindness....I give thanks to the source of it all for helping us know this kind of love. My day that started with so much difficulty, has just started over thanks to your kindness. Love, fifi
