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Original episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/naomi-shihab-nye-before-you-know-kindness-as-deepest/id150892556?i=1000511609818

Key ideas in this episode: Writing as a way to communicate with ourselves, getting to know kindness and sorrow; a poem by Naomi & a Japanese concept of spaciousness.

1 quote:
"All of us think in stories. We aren't separate from text or words, because we ultimately think in text and words."

Who is Naomi Shihab Nye?

She's a poet, song writer and novelist who's won multiple awards for her poems and writings.
A professor of creative writing at Texas State University.
Her poems cover topics such as kindness, empathy, refugees and travel and more.


Idea 1 @ 7mins: 

In Japan, there's a concept called Utori. It is spaciousness, it's a kind of living with spaciousness, for example, like it's leaving early enough to get somewhere so that, you know, you're going to arrive early. So when you get there, you have time to look around or others

Idea 2 @ 22mins, a poem Naomi wrote:  

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Idea 3 @ 46 mins: 

The act of writing helps with thinking and understanding. Naomi talks about how writing is a tool to survive in hard times or to anchor our days, but also to get into a more gracious discussion and community with ourselves. There are many different versions of our selves that live on in each of us at any given moment, The childish self, the mature self, the confused self yourself that makes a lot of mistakes. Writing provides a platform to have a conversation between those different selves inside you.


1 question:

Can you think of the different selves you have within yourself and what kinds of conversations they are having with each other?


Other topics:

Naomi's dad, personal stories of him being a refugee and them talking and bonding over specific events.
Multiple readings and background stories of Naomi's poems on things such as kindness. 
On writing and incorporating poems into our lives.

Written summary: https://www.owltail.com/summaries/zIQLp-Naomi-Shihab-Nye-Before-You-Know-Kindness-As