On Foot Stomping and Metta as Balm

She feels that the year has been nothing but the drawing down of borders. Her heart feels caged, like there is a bird scratching up the chambers, constricting.

'It's not fair' she wails. She is crying over her lost freedoms, which she did not even know were so important to her until they were gone, but isn't that the way of it?

She stomps her feet.

And on the other side of the world, she sees the icicles that loosen from eaves and shatter on the ground, the snow drifts and the power outages. She sees the wilting buds behind the glass in the flower sellers window, and the food spoiling. She sees the children behind screens, remotely downloading what is better in person. She imagines the hugs lost, the grieving families, the lonely ones in lonely apartments in these long lonely viral days, catching on each other and they tumble into the new year. She reads of a father in Ireland, wanting to die in Tasmania, and missing his opportunity to fly for the fourth time, this time by five hours. He will never reach home.

She closes her eyes, puts her hands on her heart, sends metta.

*This is a freewrite in response to the prompt FAIR in the freewriters community, which you can find here. No suprise it bubbles up from the snap lockdown this week, only five days. It's easy to get wrapped up in your own anxieties about this. Despite being in a fairly good situation for the last few months, a snap lockdown certainly brought up the trauma of last year, especially for those in Melbourne who were Stage 4 for months. I didn't believe it was fair to keep everyone locked down to that extent - a five kilometre rule is ridiculous for people who live rurally, and how on earth was I going to spread it or get it when I went to the beach? Hence the feet stomping.

Metta, however, can be a bit of a balm. Metta's a beautiful practice that sends love, compassion and kindness to all beings. It helps reduce negative emotions towards yourself and others, helping cultivate positive emotions instead. I think about the community pages on Facebook this week and all the angst and anger about people wearing masks, and wish we could all simply do a practice like this to act with a little more loving kindness toward each other.

It's easy to do - well, depending on how foot stomping MAD you are! The first step is to find a quiet spot and breath. Then, you think about how you feel and repeat phrases a bit like this, focusing on the heart in a non judgemental manner:

“May I be happy. May I be safe. May I find peace.”

Then you extend the phrase outward to people you know either personally or not. You direct this towards them, no matter how frustrating, angry or annoyed you might be towards them.

“May you be happy. May you be safe. May you find peace.”

Then it's a matter of repeating it over and over, recognising the negative emotions but noticing how they fade as you focus on the intent of the words. Eventually, the compassionate feelings arise.

Why? Because negative emotions only cause ourselves harm, and how do we serve the world then? Every being has a right to be happy, and safe, and find peace - it's such a beautiful and essential truth.

Maybe if we all practiced metta it'd become second nature to us, and there would be no need for foot stomping.