In a world filled with so much violence, it’s always a delight to me to discover a solution to a problem that is free of unnecessary aggression.  Walking through Central Park on a recent morning, I noticed two Canadian geese on the Great Lawn.  They are there often – as are many other geese – and leave droppings in areas where people picnic on the grass.

I noticed a man with a border collie stop at a place along the fence that surrounds the Great Lawn.  He bent down and lifted the bottom of the fence to let the dog onto the lawn.  A passerby said, “Are you supposed to do that?”   The man showed her his jacket, which said something like “Geese Police”.  He told her that his job was to discourage the geese from gathering in the places where people picnic..

As we watched, the dog hunkered down and belly crawled toward the geese.  He stayed about 15 feet away and just stared.  The geese looked at him, then ate some grass, then looked at him again.  The man explained that the dog was exhibiting predator behavior and that the goal was to get the birds to move to the pond across the way.  For a few minutes, the dog just stayed where he was, hunkered down, staring at the geese.  Then, all at once, the two geese took off and the dog began to run after them.  The man called the dog back immediately, as the two birds glided over the lawn to the nearby pond.

As I went on my way with a smile on my face, what struck me was how simple and nonviolent the intervention was and I wondered how many times we miss an opportunity to engage one another and our world with less drama and aggression and with more creativity. 

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore your relationship with nonviolence.  There are so many ways we may be inadvertently violent in daily life.  We may say things more harshly than needed, or give people a look that injures them.  We may drive aggressively, rather than thinking of how we can help keep the road safe for ourselves and everyone else.  We might push by someone in the grocery store without realizing that our aggressive behavior risks knocking them off balance, literally or figuratively.

As you move through your daily life, track your verbal and physical actions and notice whether you would call them nonviolent or violent.  It’s useful to remember that violence can dress itself up in self-righteous clothing.  For example, if someone is in your way, you have the option to say “excuse me” in whatever nonviolent way makes sense to you, or you might actually push by, muttering something under your breath about people who get in your way – and not realize that your pushing and muttering are aspects of physical and verbal violence.  Play with the difference between being assertive – asking for what you need and want, and aggression – using what can slip into violent energy to interact with your world.

Of course, there are times that aggressive energy may be essential as a resource, so we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  The key to this experiment is to notice how often during a day there are choices between engaging the way the border collie did, by communicating something clearly but without violence, and the way a predatory animal might respond with an intent to actually kill the geese.

As with all the experiments, please remember to bring along curiosity as your companion.  The point of these exercises is to enhance the capacity to be aware of the impulses behind what we do, to notice the quality and tone of the energy we bring into our world, and to have a greater range of choices about who and how we want to be as we move through daily life.