MY FRIDAY WRAP - TENDERNESS

There simply are not enough moments of the day to say, ‘Return to the deepest tenderness, again and again and again.’

It seems this one act of love and compassion towards ourselves (and to life) is easily drowned out by the incessant demands of the conditioned self.

I mean, when were we taught that tenderness was an essential part of the human experience? Except for very few people, the answer is never. Tenderness had no particular value so was not prioritized either in school, at home, or even in whatever religion we followed.

And thus we deem it of little importance as we grow, imagining that our individual and collective human experience can survive fine without it. We do not give it a (conscious) moment’s thought.

And now we live in a world where we have to remember, reintroduce and talk about how crucial tenderness is to the quality of our life and the quality of those people we touch lives.

Tenderness, it is not an optional extra. Without it we are at war with ourselves and/or with the world we experience.

Here in the US we are entering an extraordinary period where tenderness, understanding, compassion and respect are going to all but disappear under the collective weight of division. People are angry and scared, and that fans the flames of righteousness. Righteousness occludes the soft intrinsic energies of tenderness and kindness, it is as though we cannot hear them through the noise.

So my dear heart and friend, I want to invite you, remind you, beseech you, to turn again and again towards tenderness. It may be all we have as all hell breaks loose.

Love Kavi