I am lucky enough to live in the same town as Naomi Shihab Nye and feel thrilled to be able to say I have interacted with her several times. She is as awesome as her work would imply: deep understanding shines from beautiful eyes.
This poem was put into my radar by another hero, Martha Beck, who read it on one of her podcasts. Martha is a favorite of mine because she is Harvard-trained AND accepts the universe as something more than we can begin to comprehend. Her work has helped me overcome a lot of my anxiety. While her book Anxiety is great, I feel like I know her from listening to the audiobook that tells the story of her son Adam’s conception and birth. Plus she turned me onto the Telepathy Tapes too! And her concept of Bug Soup is one you may hear in therapy with Creative Fox therapists!
Martha explains the relationship between creativity, anxiety, and kindness, saying:
As I’ve written in my book Beyond Anxiety and talked about at length, creativity is the opposite of that anxiety. However, there’s a crucial step you must take to go from anxiety to creativity, and you cannot skip it. That step is kindness.
This idea of kindness is easy for many of us to share with others, but sometimes (a lot of times!) harder to share with ourselves. This is why we often pull in the Mindful Self-Compassion program for early sessions with clients.
Because kindness is the key, kindness is the companion that helps you heal the hole in your heart.
Kindness helps you realize you are not alone.
Here are three of my favorite lines from the poem:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things….
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore…
….Only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness,” from Words Under the Words (1995). © 1995 Naomi Shihab Nye.
Excerpt used for commentary. Read the full poem on Poets.org.
Listen to the Martha Beck Podcast at https://marthabeck.com/gathering-pod/la-what-lies-beyond/