by Nimue Brown, reposted form Nimue’s Blog Druidlife
Recently on Facebook, my friend Vishwam raised the question of what would happen if we were all a little kinder to ourselves. As a consequence of the post, I’ve spent some serious time with that question. What does it mean to be kinder? What does that involve? What happens individually and collectively if we head that way?
Growing up I internalised the idea that to be good you have to be selfless, giving, self-sacrificing, even. I went to a Church of England school and encountered a lot of that sort of thinking. To be selfish is wrong, and to be good you put others first. Everyone else, all the time. I remember instructions to help the needy and I remember wondering how you were supposed to tell if you were the needy and should be helped.
Being kinder to yourself does not automatically translate into selfishness. It doesn’t mean we are being unkinder to someone else, as though kindness is a finite resource we must deploy cautiously. Being kind to yourself may well make it easier to be kind to others, and to the world as a whole.
We could be kinder to ourselves in our own thoughts. Accepting mistakes, honouring our limitations, talking gently to ourselves in face of failure and let-down being examples. How we talk to ourselves has a huge impact on our daily lives. Being kind about this costs no one else anything at all.
You should be able to have time, space and resources for the harmless things that nourish, cheer and lift you. A few hours with a book, a jigsaw, a walk amongst trees, and so forth. We should be able to be kind to ourselves in these ways.
This is where self-kindness starts to interact with justice. If you are carrying an unfairly large burden, then there may be people – at work or at home – who are invested in you not having the time or resources to be kind to yourself. That kind of unkindness is internalised all too easily, and the habits of thought can remain even when we aren’t being misused.
Systemic abuse occurs in contexts where people are also set up to believe they don’t deserve kindness, or rest, or opportunities. This tends to involve other factors – race, gender, sexuality, and poverty are especially common. When the systems you live in are designed to knock you down, then being kind to yourself is a pretty radical choice, an act of rebellion that will have all kinds of consequences.
Kindness is the best way to fight oppression. It is key to dismantling abusive structures, and to surviving bullying and exploitative people and situations. That kindness has to start in how you treat yourself – and that isn’t always easy when you are habituated to unkind treatment.
As with most things, a community approach is more effective than going solo. When we are kind to each other, and support each other in self-kindness we can build resilience and better ways of thinking. We can learn ways of not participating in our own oppression and that makes us better able to resist, and to create something better.
If you struggle to treat yourself kindly because so much more seems so much more important, remind yourself that this is where a real revolution can start. How can we hope to make the world a kinder place if we don’t practice that? Where better to begin than in our own minds and lives? Take any opportunity for kindness that comes your way – including being kind to yourself.
