Joyous rage militant kindness medicine hat

And there's something about Paul Simon.

Back in the day I enjoyed listening to the big hit songs of Simon and Garfunkel, but hadn’t fully appreciated the range of Simon’s work. Neither had a I appreciated the quiet, steady, determined confidence and talent that Simon un-exuberantly delivered, and that he seemed still to be working to deliver to the world as the biopic was in progress. The biopic Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, is a long slow homage to the man and his work.

He is working on Seven Psalms in his home studio. The music is real take-me-to-church, in all senses if you are that way inclined; a meditation on life and beauty. It’s calm and confident, beautiful. And there is Simon, amidst his collaborators: conducting, considering, requesting, praising, being himself. Standing firm, reflective, and again un-exuberant in his delivery, and yet the music is joyous.

Long before that, though, (the whole documentary is more than 3 hours long) while he and Art Garfunkel are making music together, they’re nutting out Songs For America. Bridge Over Troubled Water is playing over film footage of roiling American scenes, and then of pensive Jack indoors, active Bobby in the street, and MLK on the street, marching. The producer: You can’t have just those three. Paul Simon: Why? The producer: Because they’re all democrats. Paul Simon: Really? We think of them as all assassinated.

[Please note: I drafted this days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. There is and will be plenty of commentary about that. This morning 12 September, I recommend Owen Jones’s Substack, Battlelines : Charlie Kirk’s assassination: a dark, cold winter is coming. A heavily compromised US democracy was already in mortal danger. This is a moment of terrible danger]

Simon is now deaf in one ear. He decides to experience it as a gift, not a problem. That struck an edge of this piece, for which I had flung down a few key words. How to survive the continual assaults on humanity, and kindness and decency with joyous rage. Not that I have any answers for anyone else. There are enough people with advice for that, including people I admire, follow and often reference. I can only say that I hold firmly to instinctive, continual resistance to hateful behaviour in all its forms. For me that’s necessary in order to stay well, to stay human. To stay.

One morning in the week of writing this piece, I received a message from a friend and former colleague and boss, that a mutual acquaintance’s young adult child had died in tragic circumstances. That statement without further embellishment tends to mean one thing - the unthinkable one thing every parent would dread, or dreads, depending on how they perceive their child’s wellness. John and I reflected on and compared aspects of our early years and what happens now for young people in several WhatsApp exchanges. We agreed, our worlds were small, geographically and socially, his in northern England, mine in small town New Zealand. Our horizons were largely dictated by the economic circumstances of our parents; the cost of travel, and even the cost of phone calls. We consulted encyclopaedias and other print resources. When I was in primary school, the entire school walked to the brand new Regent Theatre in High Street, Hawera to see The Living Desert. Lots of tiny creatures making their way over and through sand granules in magnified and magnificent close up, until the projection stopped. Shattering! Before the micro and other camera and technical work brought to us by David Attenborough and others, we had newsreels with weeks old news, and boxing matches, and that was pretty much it. Now young people have the whole world in their faces. They and we, flooded with information: the good, the bad and the ugly. If peer pressure was a pain in our youth, the digital age has created an incalculable and unstoppable avalanche of competing inputs. It has also created keeping up with the Jones’s on steroids.

With the music, fashion, revenge porn, bitcoins, wellness hacks, beauty hacks, sport, movies, theatre, messages from our loved ones and lovers and haters has streamed horrific imagery of acts of cruelty that we couldn’t make up, and yet someone has. The Gaza genocide has been live-streamed since 08 October 2023, and before that, the horror of 07 October.

I used to feel joyous rage about the injustices of the world, you know, the credo attributed to Emma Goldman if I can’t dance I won’t be in your revolution, (though she didn’t say those words), but the last 705 days (at time writing on 12 September 2025), sneer at the idea of joy. Only grief and rage remain.

What do I mean by ‘to stay’? To not be completely overwhelmed, to continue to engage, to carry on with the work I/we do? I have just resumed daily meditation, after abandoning it for weeks, because I was falling asleep at it, so great the need to dull my feelings of despair. The endless attempt to annihilate the Palestinian people has crushed me/us. I refuse to pretend that I’m happy, or that I have equilibrium in the way I did before. It is simply not possible. With determination I recover intermittently. Long enough to perform essential tasks. To make art. And to see people, to connect with friends and family, all of us reduced by the enormity of the genocide and its unspeakable details.

Where is the medicine? Is there a cure? Can the world be brought back after the long stretch and lean in the unkind direction? Just as the Holocaust of WWII is still with us, this genocide committed by zionist Israel in Gaza against the Palestinian people will stay with us for decades, or hundreds of years.

Considering how to ‘stay’ the first undeniable fact is our feelings, which take up residence in our bodies. The second undeniable fact is that if we deny the feelings, suppress them, we become unwell in all the ways we know are possible. Tich Nhat Hanh the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and political activist recommended treating all of our feelings, especially those which have a bad rap, like anger, as a beloved child. He mimed cradling anger in his arms, soothing it with caresses and sweet talk, even thanking it for protecting him. He also recognised that beneath anger there is always sadness. We have to allow our feelings. Dr Gabor Mate amplifies that call, and backs it up with the science showing mind-body is one. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Knows The Score affirms the concept.

The much flaunted ‘it is what it is’ or ‘the world is like that’ hit me as spiritual bypasses. Being urged to cheer up when you’re in deep grief. No, we have to allow our grief, our anger, our disappointment, our rage and frustration and then call on all the resources we have within ourselves, and by connection with friends and family, and political action, being in community, loving relentlessly, with gratitude for goodness, and pushing through with militant kindness. This is the real medicine.

Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence Paul Simon from The Sound of Silence

When we are under the weight collective trauma new personal challenges and bereavements seem too heavy. Systemic or family constellations is deep somatic and energy work, trauma and resilience informed, safe and effective in brief interventions. I have lots of energy for that! See my website for chat, bookings, more about me, because you want to know who you are working with.

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Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.