International Women’s Day

Happy International Women’s Day.

The theme for this day, this year, is a wake up call reminder to stop the violence toward men and women and children around the globe.

To this end, I’ve often pondered how my life, my thoughts, can have any kind of healing impact on the gross atrocities that go on world wide.

I don’t feel particularly violent toward anyone and yet, violence doesn’t have to be physically imposed.

If you think about it, sometimes we are our own worst enemies with the way at times we allow our thoughts to entertain condemning perspectives about ourselves.

And if you are really honest about it, at times our thoughts entertain critical judgements of people we are acquainted with or those we talk about in the news or in any realm that our interests lie.

If we expand our sense of violence to include any acceptance in thought that tares apart another’s individuality, especially our own, we each have much we can do to contribute to ending violence toward humanity.

I’ve started in simple ways with myself: watching my thoughts, weighing them, seeing if I am accepting some kind of cruel judgement about myself–maybe I’m putting in my contacts and as I look in the mirror this heinous accusation blares “golly look at dem wrinkles kid. You’re a complete mess.’

No one hears that thought but me.

But if I accept it, it in a very large way is tolerating abuse of myself.

And this in unacceptable.

You might be rolling your eyes. ‘What harm does a little comment like that do?”

Much.

What if you could refuse to listen to any such complaint?

The reality is I don’t want to judge my physical appearance. I know balance. I know grace. I embody both. We each do.

Lines on my face do not define my abilities anymore so than lines on a sidewalk imply an unsound foundation.

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Here’s another example: earlier today in the park, a very militant woman raced over to me and yelled several nasty things.

I don’t know this woman. I’ve never met her. My first reaction was a tightened throat, a feeling of invasion of privacy, a bit of fear, and a very tense heart.

Clearly she was yelling at a bunch of other things in her thoughts and chose to take out her anger on me.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment her treatment of me was sound or sane.

I am suggesting that as I recognized what was happening to me, I paused, regrouped, got into my thoughts and hugged my heart.

Her words do not have to have any power over my being. I can choose to maintain peace in my heart rather than react and yell back at her or even consent to feeling victimized. I don’t have to take further action and warn others of this crazy lady who’ll verbally attack you in the park.

In fact, by choosing to defend my peace within, the more I hugged my heart and realized my internal security and safety, the more the tenseness left.

And more, I began to feel compassion toward her, and started to defend for her that she didn’t have to be imprisoned by a hardened heart, no matter what trials she’s had in her own life.

I can’t say I hung out in the park longer to continue to be yelled at by this woman. I did take action to vacate that situation. But, I could just as easily left the park with a huge load of anger and opposition toward her invasive behavior.

Instead, by diving into my thoughts and deciding what I was going to accept about myself and about this woman in a larger way, by the time I returned home my thoughts were completely calm and steady once again.

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I deeply trust that the nudge impelling all of us to continue the defense of equal rights for men and women around the world stems from an innate yearning to be our best selves. And to me this comes from the core substance of our spirituality, that which unites each one of us in consciousness, regardless of race, gender, creed…regardless of upbringing or under which system our lives have been shaped.

A favorite author, Mary Baker Eddy, penned more than 130 years ago a truth I strive to emulate:

God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love (Science and Health, p.106).

Truly am I finding in my day to day that the more I get into my thoughts, govern them, and determine what I’m going to hold onto and what I’m going to refuse to harbor, I do see a noticeable difference in my intolerance for self condemnation of any kind and critical judgements of others.

At times I feel I have a ways to go. But in simply making an effort, there’s a real sense of knowing that violence will not have the final say.

How bout you? How are you directly addressing the need to lessen violence toward men and women and children? What are you doing in your immediate day to day to this end? I would value hearin….

Thanks for reading and offering your perspective….