She rides closely to the back of the car and an angry face in the rearview mirror.

He comes downstairs in the morning and is curt and short.

She is angry that service is slow.

The instinct to push back comes first.  Give back what is given to you.  An angry gesture back to the driver, a curt and short reaction, an impatient response.

What if they were met with love instead?

What if instead of increasing the flame, it was diffused?

What if pain was met with love and patience, instead of ego versus ego?  Who is right and who is wrong and who is being treated unfairly and behaving in ways that disrespect who I am.

What if we let all of that go?  It is a burden too heavy to carry.

What if we met the pain that exists in the world with breath?  With patience and kindness and an attempt at understanding.  What if that was our default instead?

It is not easy.  It takes practice and patience and a letting-go of what our mind wants.

A practice:

Picture someone.  A person who has caused pain.  A person who holds anger.  A person you encountered in the past week that met you with hostility.  Close your eyes.  Hold that person in your mind’s eye.  Now send them love.  Say it out loud if you can: “I love you.”  Feel your breath.  Feel your heart beat.  Feel the love you are producing for them and for yourself.  A shift.  A release in any anger or resentment you may feel and an energy of love being sent to them.  A new lightness in the place of a heaviness you were not meant to carry.

When we meet others with love in their hostility, it cannot help but to diffuse the flame of anger and lighten the burden of ‘being right’ and ‘being respected’.

We are all made of the same cells, same earth, same energy.  As we send love to others, we cannot help but to be filled with that same love in return – and our Earth can begin to shift to one of peace and love, where there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, just us together in this collective experience of life.