slightly to protect the privacy of the teachers involved.
Mary
“Mary” taught ten and eleven year olds at a public school in affluent Marin County. She was soft-
spoken, young, pretty, idealistic and deeply committed to her students. One morning, a boy came
in to school with a knife and threatened her. This incident occurred the week after we had learned
about the refractory period [see
. This concept, coined by Paul Ekman, was consistently
helpful to teachers in revealing how both the body and the mind are hard-wired to respond in
certain ways when in the grips of an emotion. As Mary shared the story with our class, she was
tearful and still visibly shaken. Though the boy was expelled from school, his friends banded
together in the back of the classroom and taunted her. On so many levels, this was not “supposed”
to be happening: not in Marin, not to her, not from boys so young.
That evening, we explored kindness and compassion in class. For homework, the teachers were
asked to extend these feelings towards a difficult student during a daily guided meditation on
kindness.
Margaret Cullen
"Kindness"
17:37 min
The following week, Mary excitedly shared with the class how she was able to turn the situation
around, using what she had learned about her own emotions and through practicing kindness and
compassion. She noticed, first of all, that when she thought of the boy who was expelled and his
bullying friends, she became angry. She remembered that during the refractory period of anger she
could only see that which affirmed her anger, thus bringing to mind those behaviors that enraged
and infuriated her, and forgetting any good qualities the boys might have demonstrated at other
times. Within the container of the formal kindness practice, she was able to reflect on how their
behavior could be understood as a “tragic expression of unmet needs”
(see video chapter Non-
Violent Communication) and how they, just like everyone else, wanted to be happy and loved but
didn’t always know how to get their needs met. Seeing them through “the eyes of the heart”, she
was able to remember moments when they had been funny or sweet, and she was able to
genuinely wish them well, if only for a few moments while meditating.
A hallmark of compassion and kindness is the recognition of our shared common humanity.
Typically, the more alien the other person, the more challenging it becomes to generate and
extend feelings of care and concern. These boys, with their bullying and cruelty, were well outside
the bounds of what felt safe and familiar to Mary. And yet, as she practiced sending them wishes of
kindness and compassion, she began to see that they were human, just like she was. She
remembered that they had parents that loved them, and worried about them. She remembered her
own insecurities and need for approval from her peers, and imagined how this was driving their
behavior. And she realized that they suffered temporary blindness during strong emotions, just as
she did. She was even able to feel genuine concern for the boy who had threatened her and
shared that her “heart broke open” as she imagined how painful the situation was for his entire
family.
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