The art of contemplation to counter a hardened world.
The word soft has come to mind a lot lately. I say to myself “Go softly” often and I think about what “a soft approach” to work, life and activity might look like. Some people have challenged my use of the word soft. I presented a paper recently and placed this adjective in the title to describe the way in which we need to be engaging with the world. One response was “Isn’t the word a bit weak and vague?” And “Doesn’t it make engagement less certain?” They were implying that if I was going to communicate my strategy, using the word soft to describe it would water-down the impact. And, I also was told that men might not relate to the strategy if it was soft.
What is your response to the word soft?
It’s funny to think that adding such an innocuous word into our vocabulary and discussions more often could be a seriously radical act. Yet the reactions I had to my paper show that the word does unsettle people.
Despite its gentleness, and maybe because of it, a soft way of living confronts, challenges and dismantles some of the ingrained patterns of existence that have left us feeling unsatisfied and empty. And it offers us a better way – a way that we know deep within to be true.
I wonder if a soft life is what we are all longing for in a world that has become harsh and hardened.
The undermining of a soft life starts early on. It doesn’t happen in an intentional and cruel way. It happens because we are all part of the same system. And most people in our lives have our best at heart. When I was ten I loved reading poetry, books and especially fairy tales. Reading these transported me to another world of wonder and magic. I felt like my true self in those times. So I made up my mind that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know how to express that, so I boldly said to my mother one day “I want to be a writer when I grow up.” I felt that by saying this I was making a magical pact with myself; if I said it out loud I thought, it would happen. But my mother’s crushing response was something like “But you can’t make a living from that.” I don’t blame her. It’s a very normal response. It is supposed to help a child become accustomed to the way the world is – we monetise everything; this is the only way to exist. My mother was introducing me to the way things are. And in that one moment I shifted from a soft way of living to a hardened way – a way that took wonder away from my future and placed planning, money, reason and productivity there. All of us have stories like this.
What early stories do you have about being introduced to a harsh world?
In the current much talked about series Adolescence on Netflix, there is a tender scene when the father of a boy who has committed a horrible crime enters the bedroom of his 13-year-old son and sees a teddy-bear on the bed. The son is now in detention for the crime and the father realises his loss. The teddy-bear is a symbol of child-likeness, innocence and vulnerability. The boy has now lost the softness that comes with childhood and has been cruelly formed by a hardened society that espouses toxic masculinity, flattened emotions and disenchantment. The father realises too late what has happened. It’s a more extreme example of how living harshly can form us for our worst.
How do we counter this formation? What does it look like to resist becoming harsh people in a hard world? Especially when everything in our current system works to make us toxic, capitalistic, exploitative and hard-hearted.
We find resonance with the word soft; we are tired of living in a closed system of consumption. However, we need to take care that we don’t replace one system that doesn’t work and has left us dry with another similar set of practices. As we deconstruct this unsatisfying way to live what must replace it?
One way is learning from the mystics and contemplatives of the past and present who teach us to move softly, slowly and from a deeper well within rather than superficially. They teach us to take into account all living things and see the connection between all things, the small things and the seemingly unimportant things that actually are the most important. They teach us to place our faith in what matters and fiercely reject what is unimportant. The mystics teach us contemplative practices that help us to distinguish, and that old- fashioned word, to discern, truth in a world that is slowly crumbling. As we look for something else today, some different way of being other than the way things are, we can turn to a mysticism in the ordinary for wisdom and solace.
In my next post I’ll flesh out some of these practices that might help soothe our frazzled nervous systems and offer us an alternative way to live- a softer way.
What are some practices that you already engage in to live life softly?
Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski, Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions, Uniting Mission and Education. Karina also blogs at An Ordinary Mystic.
