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“Meanwhile, remember that attitude is everything. Live simply, be kinder than necessary, offer compassion, for everyone is fighting some kind of battle. Love generously, care deeply, speak kindly. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. . . It is about learning to dance in the rain.”
Jyoti Chrystal, 2008
These words, written by a founder of a “yoga and healing” center in Montclair, NJ, have been prominently displayed in the kitchen of our house for many years. They may have been put there in 2009 by my wife, a yoga practitioner, when Jyoti passed on at the age of 64. I’ve read them probably hundreds of times, and when I do I take a minute to reflect on them.
They are literally words to live by, not just for individuals but for the internal life of the progressive organizations which are so essential, and whose ultimate working unity is so necessary if we are to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe and the breakdown of ecosystems and human societies; bring into being a truly different world.
Attitude is everything
For much of humankind’s patriarchal and warring history going back thousands of years, the most prevalent “attitude” of those with political and economic power has been all about control and domination: men over women, Europeans over everyone else, those with wealth over people working and struggling to survive. And that’s still, on the surface, predominantly the way it is. But over the past 70 or so…
