I’m a member of a few different meditation and mindfulness social media groups, or I follow their pages.
One is focused around meditation humour and sometimes the memes posted are hilarious.
But a couple of posts recently really made me stop and think.
The first posed this idea: Delete one thing from Earth that you think would make it better.
It’s had somewhere in the region of 2,800 comments.
Some recurring suggestions were along the lines of hatred, greed, ignorance, racism, war, pollution etc.
Which I’m sure we’d all agree we could live without.
But I found it remarkable that some people were specifically naming a person, or a group of people.
While it smacks of intolerence and unkindness in itself, I fail to see how removing one person will make things better.
If it’s because of their views, they won’t be in isolation.
If – hypothetically – you removed that one person, there would be many more that could take their place.
Who knows, they could be even worse?
Some comments made me smile, such as comments on social media.
Some I nodded at, cancer and mosquitoes, for example.
But the post made me feel uncomfortable overall.
Another post a short time later was much more uplifting.
Add a positive word to this jar that starts with the first letter of your name.
Okay I’m up for a go… and why stop at one…
(Press play for fun)
Adorable, abundance, agile, amazing, awesome, affection, admire, appreciate, authentic, achieve, adventure, acceptance, action, ace, affirm, advocate, advance…
I could go on for sometime.
This was a really positive and mindfulness exercise all at once.
It showed me yet another example of how what we say, and how we frame our language, can have a big impact.
The first post had the negative connotation of deletion.
The second is all about associating your name with something positive.
What a great activity for your next work meeting, family dinner or a kid’s party!
It certainly made me smile, and it made me feel good to have such words connected to my name.
A sense of kindness to myself.
I think we could all do with more of that, and then the Earth would probably feel a better place anyway!
Ann 🙏