Kindness

Sitting here at about 30,000 feet above Winnipeg. It is 11 November. The world seems to have changed quite a bit in about a week and yet it hasn’t changed at all.

I’m having a hard time really understanding where we are as a society, as a community. Broadly speaking, it feels like we aren’t one.  Maybe we are a collection of communities – or perhaps tribes is a better term at this point. We care for the same, and desensitize ourselves to any other.

Maybe I see things the way I do because I do spend so much time away, and meeting new people, and being places where I myself am the other.  Maybe it gives me a different perspective. By no means does it make me better, because I still can’t seem to do very much about it.

I’m really kind of at a loss. It seems that things like compassion, community-mindedness, ethics, caring for your neighbor, respecting each others’ differences, caring for the less fortunate … All of these things seem to have been expressly and directly rejected in this past election. 

I can’t do that. That was neither how I was brought up, nor how I want to be.

I choose kindness.

I will choose service, and honor, and caring for those around me. I will choose to try to make the world a little bit better than how I first encountered it. I will choose healing and repair.

Many of the songs that I write come from this place of healing and trying to find a better way. I hope that you have this in your heart as well, and my music helps you to find and hold onto that spirit even better.

I’m sure this will be an evolving story. It always is. In the meantime, if you are worried, and hurt, I am too. Let’s try to find and make some joy together. And always to be kind. 

-Chris