Unity Tuesday Lemonade: Why Unite?

So, really big day today. Not only are we looking at the last Unity Tuesday of the month of May, we’re looking at the first Unity Tuesday since Memorial Day, A.K.A. “the unofficial start of summer.” Accordingly, I decided today might be a good day to offer up a refreshing pitcher of sour-sweet lemonade instead of a hot and sticky grilled cheese (delicious though they may always be).

But anyway, big day.

If it seems to some of you that we are constantly taking the time to revisit and reexamine the very basic components of our little weekly ritual-slash-joke, congratulations, critic! It’s quite by design. And I almost want to apologize in case it gets annoying – sometimes I feel a tiny bit annoyed by it myself – but I can’t because that’s just the way of things. The very nature of Unity Tuesday, that at its very core, requires almost weekly reinforcement for the experiment to stand any chance of long-term success. After all, Unity Tuesday is still an imaginary thing, an imaginary thing in its infancy. Its blueprint was drawn up less than six months ago and, while estimates vary, it has as of yet been accepted by a low figure of around three people and a maximum high figure of, charitably, two dozen or so. It would be very easy to just stop talking about it – or, easier still, post a simple little blessing every Tuesday morning and forget about it for the rest of the day. Hardly anyone would notice at all and the whole thing is so young that no one is likely to lose any substantial personal investment if it were to disappear.

Except for me, that is, your faithful wizard. You see, not even the many disappointments I’ve experienced related to this project (and there have been many) have shaken my belief in its continuation and future success. If you’ll allow me to be at least mildly self-serving, I’ll admit that it is I, more so even than any of you dear readers, who needs the reminders. This reinforcement is for me. I’m the one who gets so caught up in external circumstances that I forget I have any control over the course of Unity Tuesday. I’m the one who knows it’s Unity Tuesday and wishes people a happy Unity Tuesday in the morning – online with a blessing, in person with my cheerful words walking by – and then forgets for the rest of the day to do anything different than I would do on any other day.

Unity Tuesday is not just any other day. Today is a big day. I’m the one who needs reminding, so bear with me, and if I’m not the only one who struggles to follow through on the fullness and richness of the idea, I hope you get something out of my self-reminder as well.

Actually, I hope absolutely none of you beat yourself up about any of these things. As a wizard, I have to hold myself to an impeccable standard…and, after all, I invented Unity Tuesday. If I can’t do it, that should tell me something – it should at least tell me that I shouldn’t be telling anyone else to do it! So I’ll just briefly share with you my experience with all of this.

I beat myself up when a whole Tuesday goes by and I failed to listen to any music I consider sacred – and, on some dark days, much music at all. Still, while this is undeniably regrettable, we can’t really say the soundtrack is the most important aspect of the Unity Tuesday idea. Plus, I can probably try harder without breaking much of a sweat.

I beat myself up when a whole Tuesday goes by and I realize that I hated it because I let it be just another crappy day. Unity Tuesday is better than that. I can do better, right? But still, I can’t really be blamed if I don’t keep it perfectly together every week. That’s just part of being human, right?

I also beat myself up because I pretty much never meditate during the day on Tuesdays, even though I want to. I’m halfway decent about completing a basic and brief morning meditation routine, but I always strive to continue doing it enough, throughout the day, to make it seem like a continuous thread. This is, at this point, like an eternal dream that I have never once realized. Still, while my inner peace and centering as an individual is important, it isn’t central to the Unity in Unity Tuesday.

But with regard to unity itself, I beat myself up when I can’t even keep strong and bright, awake and alive for those allies of mine and those who recognize and attempt to observe the day along with me. How can I help this work out for my comrades if I can’t even present my own example as functional in the heat of the day?

Yet no, not even this is most important, for while it touches upon the theme of the day, it fails to grasp it. Unity Tuesday isn’t for those who are party to it. It’s for everyone. And unity itself, on a spiritual level if nothing else, is meaningless if it only extends to those inside of a circle or a group or a faction, even if it only extends to the Good People. Unity Tuesday has to extend to the people I don’t like. It has to extend to those who might act against me, those who I might consider my enemies. Many might question why on Earth we should waste our time seeking to unite with such malefactors, but I say it is precisely by approaching these – and, indeed, all – with a spirit of open unity that we derive our power. It is from this revolutionary act that we derive our ability to wrest our Tuesday – just one of seven total days of the week, one of five working weekdays – back from the Abyss. If we can’t approach everyone and all events and all twists and turns with light and blessing, we can’t have Unity Tuesday.

This was something I realized after only the first two weeks of this experiment, not-so-coincidentally the only two weeks in which I fully succeeded at approaching everyone with gentle kindness. If I consciously change my way of thinking so that it defaults towards liking people – even if I am not personally like that at all – it has a transformative power that extends to absolutely every atomic component of my demeanor. This is how we can change the world. It seems like it isn’t much, but it might be our only way.

As I said long ago, it seems simple, and it seems like something we should do every day, but be kind. Be kind to everyone you see today, everyone you pass by. When you get the feeling inside that it’s difficult to be kind in a given moment, it’s time to be extra kind. That’s how you win. That’s how we win together. It’s how we unite. It’s how we actually experience one day a week – one day, in contrast to zero – in communion and harmony with each other and with the divine. Can we do that today?