Learning to be Kinder to Myself

By Bruce Shawkey

As kids, we carried our pockets full of treasures adults called junk — marbles, rocks, rubber bands, change and -- maybe if were lucky -- a dollar bill to buy a Coke or some Fritos if we got hungry. Most of it worthless to anyone else, but valuable to us. I remember a boy once emptying one pair of pants into another before leaving for the day. Curious, I asked why he carried so much stuff around.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Maybe we’ll play one thing, maybe another. I’m going to be ready to have a good time whatever happens.”

That simple answer stayed with me for years.

Be ready to have a good time whatever happens.

The older I get, the more I believe that happiness depends less on circumstances and more on what we carry in the pockets of our minds. For years, mine were stuffed with fear, doubt, wondering whether I would turn out OK and amount to anything.

Eventually, I emptied those pockets.

I replaced fear with courage, and adopted a belief that setbacks are just life lessons and that despite what looks to be a disaster, that "everything will be OK." I learned that peace of mind is something we protect deliberately. We choose what we allow to live inside us.

That lesson came clearer into focus on a trip. On my plane ride, a crying baby in the seat behind me kept me from reading a book I had brought along. A big football crowd at my destination had depleted all the mid-size rental cars, leaving me with a compact. My motel room wasn’t perfectly clean because housekeeping had done a hurry-up job on getting the room ready.

Years earlier, those small infractions would have sent me into a rage and become "bar talk" to tell my friends what a miserable time I had on my last trip. Instead, I stayed calm. I reminded myself before the trip that inconvenience is part of life. Expecting perfection only guarantees irritation.

So instead of becoming angry, I felt sympathy for the exhausted mother with the sick child. Though I'm not a big football fan, I'm glad it provides entertainment for so many people who might otherwise engage in some less-than friendly form of "entertainment." And the less than perfect motel room became a reminder that outward disorder did not have to create inner disorder.

That is what it means to be kind to yourself: refusing to surrender your peace over trivialities.

None of us knows what the future holds. Nations rise and struggle. Butt fuckers become presidents. Economies shift. So much of the world is outside our control.

But one thing remains ours completely: the management of our own inner lives.

We decide whether to dwell in gloom or possibility.

We decide whether to serve ourselves alone or contribute to others.

We decide whether to bring frustration home or leave it at the door.

We decide whether setbacks harden us or strengthen us.

Again and again, the deciding vote is ours. Whatever happens around us, we still, have authority over what happens within us.