What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? -George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), novelist (22 Nov 1819-22 Dec 1880)

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If what we live for is indeed to make life less difficult to each other, to increase one another’s joy, to decrease one another’s suffering, to be of service, to contribute, to love one another, to be kind, to give of ourselves, to help each other, and so on and so forth, then what is the most helpful, most kind, most loving, most joyful, most important contribution we can make to begin to eliminate the suffering of our fellow humans?

The single greatest contribution we can make toward eliminating the suffering of others in the world is to open our sweet, timid hearts and take absolute responsibility for recognizing the enormous, infinite love that is available to us in every single moment of our existence, because we are love. 

Acknowledging that we are infinitely loved and we are made of love is incompatible with blame, need, expectation, neglect, violence, resentment, self-righteousness, fear of rejection, and any number of unattractive emotional addictions. When we love ourselves just exactly as we are, we stop demanding that other people give us the love we imagine we need from them and we stop waiting for a new set of external circumstances to make us happy and bring us peace. 

The practice of self-compassion—to take responsibility for loving and accepting ourselves completely and unconditionally, all our warts and all our brilliance, to take responsibility for our own feelings and our own interpretations about what it means to be who we are in the world—is a radical act of kindness toward every other being on the planet. 

If we want to belong, to love, to serve, to contribute, it is imperative that we stop blaming others for the state of our feelings, the state of our relationships, the state of our lives, the state of our world. This is not to say that we must or we must not change the world into a better, more loving, kinder place to live in; it is only to say that we could stop demanding and expecting anyone else to make the world a better, more loving, and kinder place for us before we allow ourselves to get on with the business of being at peace with ourselves, others, and God. 

We could offer to ourselves the love, the acceptance, the forgiveness, the tolerance that we so desperately seek from others, and we might even find that we have more than enough to share.

To change to world, start with a single breath

We are not persuaded to abandon the comfort of our fears, our hatred, and our ignorance through aggression and scolding. Shame does not elevate us, blame does not bring out our best, and contempt does not change our minds. We are hardened, not opened, by hostility. One person’s spiritual evolution cannot be determined by another person’s agenda, no matter how well-intentioned. The worst in us is softened and altered — in our own sweet time — by being heard, being seen, being met where we are.

We are changed by love.

How is love possible in times when we are confronted with hatred, fear, and ignorance? What does love look like when we are anxious, disheartened, overwhelmed, outraged? We are blessed with fear and anger to inform us when our values and boundaries are threatened or violated — this is vital information, but information is not wisdom. How, then, do we move from information to wise action? 

Love’s victory over fear begins with a single, mindful breath. A single, mindful breath is a moment of clarity, it is self-care, a leaning in, an affirmation of life and consciousness, a break in the cycle of reacting to fear and aggression with more fear and aggression. A single breath is sometimes all the space we need to collect ourselves, to gather our wits (to be fair, sometimes this requires more than one breath). 

A single, conscious breath is a radical act of love. (Remember, we are changed by love.)

In the space of a single, mindful breath, we short-circuit our real, physiological fight-or-flight response and create the space to choose whether we will come to the table with aggression or with compassion, in a state of panic or in a state of clarity, with a limited focus on what is wrong or with a vision of all that is possible when we slow down and listen for the best in ourselves.