Caring is Sharing (with Guided Practice)
PHOTO courtesy JENNY FITZGERALD, Executive Director of Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance
by Kristine Kopperud, BJW Contributor
Many people across the country—as far south as Florida—looked into the night sky this week and saw the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, the geomagnetic blaze ignited when charged particles from the sun’s atmosphere collide with Earth’s magnetic field.
Two of those people were my brother and 12-year-old niece, staring up from their driveway in suburban Omaha. Both were seeing the Aurora for the first time. Later, after my niece headed for bed (school night), my brother texted me pictures of the pinked sky. “It was better through the camera than in person,” he wrote, “but still really cool for Omaha."
Bleary and half-asleep already, my thoughts went something like this:
“Super cool.”
“Jealous.”
“Did you watch the whole thing through your phone?”
“Why are you texting at midnight?”
BUT THEN, I looked closer.
I saw more:
I’m grateful for a brother who shares pictures of a sky I missed.
I’m reminded that a “camera”—whether it’s handheld technology or our own human eye or our own human memory—is always going to reveal something other than what happened in that real moment. (In this case, the technology captured more vivid color through longer exposure and better adaptation to low light than my brother’s recently bespectacled, mid-aged eyes.)
Sharing a thing (anything) is connecting—a conduit for care, multiplier of wonder, and crucible for belonging. When we connect, neuroscience says, we’re sharing attention, a phenomenon that helps us learn things better, remember things better, and act upon those things we’ve attended to with others.
I “hearted” my brother’s photos, smiled to myself knowing his phone would buzz lightly as those hearts landed on his nightstand, and turned over in my own bed toward sleep.
This guided lovingkindness meditation, led by MIndfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) trainer STEVE OTWELL, comes from our (free!) FRIDAY COMMUNITY ZOOM PRACTICE. Join us FRIDAYS at 8AM MT!