Illustration: Matija Medved

One Day at a Time

Make Kindness Your New Habit

Daily insights on life in the face of uncertainty, by psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer

Elemental
Published in
5 min readApr 7, 2020

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Today’s column is going to be a little different.

You may have heard about Kitty O’Meara, who O Magazine called the “poet laureate of the pandemic” when her untitled poem blew up the internet. According to O, O’Meara wrote the poem in one sitting, spilling over after months of anxiety built up from watching the pandemic brew on the news.

Here it is:

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

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Elemental

Addiction Psychiatrist. Neuroscientist. Habit Change Expert. Brown U. professor. Founder of MindSciences. Author: Unwinding Anxiety. www.drjud.com. @judbrewer