Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
A friend recently told me she's pretty good at being kind and respectful, compassionate, understanding, and patient with strangers, colleagues, and neighbors, for example, but when it comes to her husband, she's very quick to anger, raise her voice, judge, belittle, really show the ugliest side of herself, and the same is true with her kids and siblings.
But, she's apparently not alone. I witness people reserving the worst behavior for the people closest to them; the same people they claim to love, while being so gentle and kind toward strangers and acquaintances. It's a behavior I have never quite understood, which has actually gotten in the way of many of my relationships. So I recently asked online why we don't strive to be as kind, understanding, or as patient as possible with the people we love? Why do they have to see the worst in us?
Why is kindness so difficult? Well, an overwhelming majority of readers and listeners explained the reason they are short-tempered, rude, and sometimes downright mean and nasty toward family members, yet, nice toward strangers is because they feel more comfortable and secure with family who love them and are quote-unquote "Forced" to put up with them, no matter what, because they are family.
And, yes, we spend more time with the people closest to us than we do with strangers, so there's something to be said about family being more likely to get on our nerves, but what confuses me isn't other people's behavior, it's our own. How is it people feel so secure in their relationships with family, so much so that they can be disrespectful and resentful toward them, while I'm the other way around: I actually reserve the very best of me for the people closest to me,
the ones I see most often. And to better understand why I have such a difficult time relating to people on this front, and for this episode to make sense, I need to reiterate some things I've previously mentioned in my books and public talks, so bear with me if you've heard some of this before. While the family dynamics with which I was raised greatly differ from anything typical, there is an interestingly unexpected silver lining to all of that dysfunction.
You see, my parents met when they were fifteen, and they got married at eighteen. There was some argument between my father's side of the family and my mother when she was a teenager, and she decided that all of his relatives are horrible people with whom she wanted to have absolutely no relationship. So much so that when they got married, they made up a new last name because she didn't want to carry his.
A few years after they married, when my sister and I were born, my mother never allowed either of us to meet anyone from my father's side of the family. What neither parent realized was going to happen when they cut family members out of their lives forever, and made up a new family name when they got married, was that it communicated a certain lesson to a kid who didn't really understand what was
it taught me that it's perfectly okay cut people out of your life if they do something you don't like, even if those people are related to you by blood. As it turns out, I didn't understand the definition of the word "Family" at all, I confused it with the word "Relatives."
Family, as I define it now, is not necessarily made up of people to whom you are related by blood; Family is the people in your life who want you in theirs, the people who accept you for who you are, they are the ones who would do anything to see you smile, and who love you no matter what. Yes, sometimes Family is blood-related, but not always.
We've all heard the phrase "Blood is thicker than water," and I always assumed it meant that blood-related family is more important than anyone outside that circle. It wasn't until recently that I learned the origin of that phrase: "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," it literally means the opposite of what I always thought it did. Our chosen family bond is actually stronger than the ones to which we are born.
And I wasn't raised with a family to whom I can be rude, mean, or disrespectful, because I've seen them cut family members out of their lives left and right. Heck, my parents disowned me for three years during which I was dead to them because they didn't approve of who I was dating at the time. I essentially learned early on that relationships, all relationships, were disposable, fragile, and therefore require nourishment because anything toxic
can literally end the relationship. In a weird way, I guess I'm saying I'm grateful for what I thought was dismissive dysfunction, but maybe it wasn't. I mean, I learned how important it is to be nice to people you love, and to find a healthy outlet and therapy for frustration and aggression, because if you take it out on the people closest to you, they'll just cut you out of their lives. I don't think we ought to get away with treating someone horribly just because we are related to them.
Family doesn't get a free pass to be rude just because they are family, do they? I guess we each decide for ourselves, which is directly connected to the last episode I released about personal boundaries. Buddhism teaches us to be tolerant and accepting, that's true, but tolerance does not mean accepting what is harmful. Period. Whether that harm is caused by family members, relatives or strangers is irrelevant.
I'm not saying we stop loving them; I can love someone unconditionally, the love has no conditions, but keeping them in my life can most certainly have conditions. The reason for that is something many people overlook: when we talk about having love and compassion, we think about other people but forget to include having compassion for ourselves in that conversation.
Treating yourself with kindness by choosing not to ingest toxins, poison, hostility or animosity regardless of the source is not selfish. I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" answer here, but when I set boundaries for what behavior I'm willing to tolerate, it applies to everyone, whether it's a friend I've known for 30 years or someone I met a few minutes ago.
What I try to do through various channels is translate the ancient teachings of compassion, kindness, and unconditional love into a language that people today can go beyond understanding to also implement into their daily lives. In order to do that, I need to be able to relate to the general public, and this being rude to the people you love the most has been a big hurdle for me to overcome. I can't relate to accepting abuse under the excuse of "Oh, but they're family so it's okay."
It's not okay. The point of this episode isn't to try and control other people's behavior or blame our own on others. It's to pause and contemplate why we feel free to be rude to the people we claim we love the most? Do we take them for granted? In working on living a life filled with gratitude, I think it's imperative that we not only internally appreciate the people in our lives, but outwardly express that gratitude through kindness and love.
I recently posted that if you are not kind to unkind people, you become one of them. So let's be kind to everyone. No excuses. It's not that hard. As the Dalai Lama says, "Be kind whenever possible; it's always possible." Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼