Wendy Talks About Benevolence

Photo by aisvri on Unsplash

I wonder.

I mean, honestly, this morning, I have an image of Ukrainian grandmas on my mind. As I write this, as I say this,

What would a benevolent world actually look like? It's been on my mind all week.

This week has been interesting.

I think what I came to at least for my own world is that a benevolent world would be moving a lot more slowly. It seems as though it's the actions and thoughts that happen in the moment really quickly without thought that really sort of push forward a world that's less benevolent. I have a tiny story — Yesterday.

I did a simple seemingly benevolent thing for one of my progeny. I made them a smoothie. And no, no one was hurt. But in counseling later that day, this smoothie making became the event that helped me unravel what keeps me from benevolence in my own life. So I'm going to try to try to unravel that here.

That thing is safety.

I made a smoothie filled with lots of really healthy stuff. Also delicious, just sweet enough. They drank most of it, but not all of it. And so what I ended up doing was even bringing that tiny amount with us in the car. So that they could have one more chance is I implored them to finish the whole thing.

He very politely said, no, thank you to their credit and stayed relatively calm while I was, I, I think that the voice I have right now, perfectly sort of mimics what my voice was that morning. Come on. Just one more sip. By the time I got back home, I was aware enough to realize that something was going on.

I actually forced myself to measure it out and show myself clearly what was going on that what had been left with negligible. If I were really worried about malnutrition, I don't think that that was a problem. So what was this all about? Obviously not nutrition. The feeling in my body when the smoothie was refused, or again, this tiny amount of smoothie was refused.

It was one of foreboding and dread. I'm really not proud of admitting this. In fact, I hesitated, hesitated as I was like, come on, just say it out loud.

But it's true.

As I drove home from counseling and ran a couple errands on my way home. I was unpacking more, what I think was going on. And I think it is this universal feeling that comes up for all of us, but all of us in a slightly different way.

Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford. I believe he's a biologist, almost sure of that. He's written a book called Behave and has several lovely videos out there talking about his work and, and in one of them, he explains that the love hormone, oxytocin, amplifies feelings of love for people who are in our “in group”. But it also amplifies feelings of not love or more exclusion for people who are outside our in group that sets up something kind of interesting.

Think about it. We all need to create a sense of I'll call it Eden. A sense of safety. A perimeter around ourselves within which we're at ease.

I don't really like noticing that I do this, but I think it's key. I think it's really that key to why benevolence is so hard. Sometimes even with people we adore.

My castle walls are built around an idea that our family in our family, we are healthy. Yikes. As you may be aware, there have been marauding vandals and thieves and whatnot banging on my castle walls for the past couple of years, past few years.

My castle is also built around an idea that we're immune to violence.

Violence happens out there to other people. I'm still not really ready to talk about the super publicly, but it's important for this essay to ment