Just For Today...

I believe every person on the earth is dealing with some type of pain or hurt. This pain or hurt may have been experienced yesterday or a half a century ago or both. The pain may have been experienced personally or may come through membership in an historically oppressed group. It may be expressed primarily as an indirect pain or hurt that comes mostly from the oppression of the group as a whole but that is also experienced personally in some way. The pain or hurt could be experienced as a mental illness, a physical illness, a mild, moderate or strong emotional disturbance or a spiritual crisis. The pain could be imagined or real. It doesn't matter.The pain can be located anywhere on the path toward healing and resolution and still impact us on a daily basis. It could be hidden or placed on display for everyone to see; either intentionally or unintentionally.

I believe the greatest amount of these pains and hurts that I am speaking of are hidden. They are hidden behind genuine or false smiles. They are hidden behind masks of contentment and social convention. They are hidden behind the desire to appear strong or invincible or grounded or spiritual or because there is a belief that we cannot allow our children to see what is really there for fear that somehow they will not be able to believe that they can have deep personal pains and hurts, move forward and still have a happy life.

One of the benefits of spending the largest amount of my life in large urban centers is that the experience has afforded me the opportunity to be around "strangers" a lot. I have been around people I did not know personally on public transportation, in parks, in long lines at the grocery store, walking along crowded sidewalks at lunchtime, at countless restaurants, in bars, in hotel lobby's, at amusement parks and multiplex theater complexes.

I have been both blessed and cursed (it seemed more a curse in my youth. It is now perceived as more of a blessing) with the ability to very strongly sense people's current emotional landscape simply by being in close proximity to them. When I was a child I thought it was something that made me crazy. As an adult I have learned it is a very common human ability. It is simply amplified in me perhaps because I was born with some form of heightened sensitivity around such things. I have also built on that possible heightened sensitivity through the areas of study I have chosen in this life.

When I was a child I tried to avoid large department stores and grocery stores as much as I could. When in such places I was always bombarded with picking up on people's feelings of sadness, anxiety, pain, frustration,disconnectedness and sorrow. I often felt overwhelmed. In time, especially after becoming a Reiki Master, I learned how to create appropriate boundaries around all of this for myself.

Though the years of experience with this, the most valuable lesson I have learned is that because of my awareness of the pain and hurt so many of us are experiencing in our day to day lives, I have endeavored to be kind to or at least to try to smile at every single person I come in contact with on any given day. I do not want to add any additional suffering to anyone else through my conscious actions or careless thoughtlessness or self-centeredness. This is very difficult to do at times. It is especially difficult to do when I encounter someone whom I perceive as being mean spirited or abusive toward me in some way. But then I remind myself, it is exactly such people who need my smile and my kindness the most. It is these people who need my smile and kindness the most. Yes, it is these people who need our compassion and understanding the most. Just for today at least.

©Sage Mahosadha

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