Lately I’ve been attempting to do loving-kindness meditation, where you let your mind rest on phrases such as may you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you live with ease.

There’s a lot to do in the world, isn’t there? You can’t look away from what’s happening and say: well it’s nothing to do with me, I personally have not done anything wrong.

I feel over-whelmed with the onslaught of news right now, and the world really does seem broken; and the world really does seem like it’s broken open, and finally change will happen. After watching the video of George Floyd being murdered by a white police officer I was outraged and didn’t know what to do about it. I’m just a small white woman living in a terraced house in Dublin city. Can I help change the world?

I go back to doing these loving-kindness meditations because they are tools laid out by the Buddha to connect with compassion, to amplify this quality in yourself and therefore radiate it out into the world. Sitting at home meditating is not going to correct the injustices out there but if you start to do it, even just a tiny bit, you will find it is a refuge from which you can re-enter your little community a kinder person.

For my part, if I’m kinder to myself, I am to my children too. If I am kinder to them, then they in turn are kinder to others. I can’t change the world or fix racism – although yes it is not enough to not be racist we must be actively anti-racist – but I can tend to my corner of the earth and make sure that the ideas and actions that grow here are the right ones.