Loving kindness is a Buddhist practice that deals with maintaining your joy; your peace and your sanity.  Everybody desires to be happy, healthy and whole.   We all desire love, peace and comfort.  But, not everybody understands that loving kindness is an essential part of this process.  The act of loving kindness frees us from depression, anger, conceitedness, vanity and all those emotions that disturb our peace of mind.  A loving, kind heart puts people before things including putting yourself first as the most important being in your life.   Happiness cannot manifest in your world if it does not exist within your own heart.   And, you can’t make others happy if you are not happy with yourself.   Loving Kindness begins with loving and cherishing the completeness of who and what your are.   It then finds the similarity in other who have had similar experiences and life lessons.   It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO of your own company, when you see Keke at Walmart stressed out because she is the only open cashier you can relate to her being stressed with the burden of everything being put on your shoulders.  Loving Kindness is an act that feels the interconnected of “you are just like me” and reacts to it in a loving way.  When you can see the similarity of someone who is different from you loving kindness becomes a natural part of your being. 

This weekend my brother wanted to see me.  Throughout the day he kept pushing back the time, canceling the location, and changing the activities.  Finally at 10:45 pm, he wanted to meet him at a local waffle house because there was this “sexy shawty” he wanted to “holla at” so he could kill two birds with one stone.  And me, I got angry and pissed off.  I am the brother.   I am family!  How dare he put someone over me who doesn’t even know his name.  But, I came to the realization that this is not the first time my brother done something like this.   There are times when he either blew me off completely or just didn’t show up at all.  For him, to include me was his way of showing his love for me.  I had to remember that he is not me.  His expression of love is not going to be the same as mine.  Therefore, inclusion in his escapade was an act of loving kindness on his part.  It meant I was important enough to be included in what he was doing.  I must accept him where he is and be okay with that because there have been times where I have been the jackass and my brother loved me regardless of my mess.

So don’t get angry or mad when someone is rude or nasty because what they are going through and what they are experiencing has absolutely NOTHING to do with you.  When the Christ spoke of “turning the other cheek” it was his way of explaining how not to allow other to steal your joy but there act of simple stupidity.  It is their own internal hurt, pain, and sorrow simply expressing itself.  It is okay to feel, express and move on from it.  The horror comes when we continue to relive that pain, that hurt and that frustration on a daily basis.  This is where meanness come into play.  This is how illness begins to manifest.  In that moment, we are operating outside something other than our own loveliness that is innate in our spirit.  Simply put: “Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.”  Take care and be blessed.  Namaste!