Mariela’s Sunday Thoughts: People
This weekend Grounded hosted its first ever “Mommy and Me” yoga and, before we knew it, we were child-proofing the studio and hiding breakables in preparation for the young yogis and yoginis that were about to arrive.
The Pilates balls we keep on the walls were the first ones to be targeted by the smiley faces and bouncy little feet. It was all play from the moment they parked their strollers.
The mats rolled out and the class started. I sat in the next room, doing some work, catching the eventual tiny runaway, and listening for a call for help or assistance.
All I heard, however, was a yoga class guided in the cadence of a cozy children’s book, lots of laughter, and multiple “woo” and “momma, look!”.
Alana, my wonderful friend and teacher that so selflessly offered this class to the studio, took the time to prepare a colorful fruit platter for the kids and delicious, nourishing mocktails for the parents. After class, she brought it all out and the kids immediately gathered around the fruit and started picking grapes and blueberries.
I thought about the instant community. The shared laughter, the collective relating to the exhaustion that comes with parenting a toddler (or so I’ve been told), the reciprocal gratitude for the teacher and the other parents that showed up to offer their kids a social activity. For the hour that the class went on, each person (new-borns and adults alike) had the chance to see each other, connect, and share a moment.
This week was a week of thought for me. I read Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi, and that lead me to ponder about people. Without spoiling this book for you (and I highly recommend the read), to me this is a story about seeing people and embracing detachment in order to understand their actions (good and bad). It is a book about a good man, that wants to do good by highlighting the good in people and, without expectations and in humble anonymity, help out whenever he can. Selflessness, devotion, hope, and solidarity are main themes in the plot, and it makes you wonder why those aspects of humanity are not always the main themes in our real lives.
And that is exactly what I wondered a few days later, when I read a one star review someone left Grounded on Google.
The world we live in relies on reviews. We’ve all done it: before choosing a place to visit, eat, or work out at, we go on Google and read what other people are saying about it, as if we couldn’t quite trust our own judgement without having some sort of preconceived reassurance. Small businesses in general (and new businesses in particular) are specially susceptible to this type of ranking.
It wasn’t the fact that it was a 1 star review and it threw out our average rating what hurt. It is obviously a fake review, no point in dwelling. But what I couldn’t ignore was the humanity behind this. And that is what really, deeply hurt.
This review existing means that someone took the time to create a fake Google account with the sole purpose of causing hurt to a business that they have never set foot in. This action, objectively a bad one, was done with malice, as an uncalled for attack, without a single chance of it being constructive, since they decided to hide in anonymity not as a selfish act of humility, like the main character in the book I read, but as pure cowardice.
I’ve always been a firm believer in that we are all, at our core, good people. Some of us, given certain distractions, end up doing bad things. And we turn (hopefully momentarily) bad. This person invested time and energy to be bad. They got so distracted and deterred from their true selves that they ended up causing harm.
I caught myself trying to justify them by guessing their distraction. Maybe it was fear? Jealousy? Insecurity? Boredom? Which Master Distractor was the culprit? In true, it doesn’t matter.
They made a choice, and their choice was to be bad. They decided to completely disconnect form the sense of unity, oneness, and community we are all born with.
If only they had actually come to Grounded, they would have learned about yoga, and they would have (hopefully) left feeling a little bit less alone.
One of our tiny participants, Beckland, was on his way out when he turned to his mom and said “momma, let’s go back and share with people”.
We’ll probably never know what exactly Beckland wanted to share. The food? The moment? Their time? The truth is that it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we as people, at our core, are good and generous. We are born that way. We just get distracted as we grow older and disconnect from our true needs.
Watching the babies and toddlers experience the moment, savor the new encounters, and immediately become friends reminded me of seeking that simplicity that appears when we tune out the distractions and pay attention to our nature.
In simple terms, we need the reminder that we’re not alone - if only we can just manage to simply share.
A simple journaling (or thought/meditation) prompt to connect with oneness:
Morning: sit or stand in a quite space. Close your eyes and picture a face - maybe it’s a loved one, maybe it’s a person you ran into at the store the previous day. Think about their life, what they’re going through. See them. Write down or take mental note of five human (emotional) characteristics of this person.
Evening: in a quite space, grab the note you made in the morning. Read one characteristic at a time and think (or write) about that characteristic within yourself. At the end of this, write one action you could take to help this person.
And if you feel we deserve it, please leave Grounded a 5 star review by clicking here