Compassion

“Compassion is not necessarily about agreeing with someone else or about liking them, it’s about making a choice to honor their humanity.”-Krista Tippitt

I am a Peace Corps volunteer. I am a humanitarian. I cry reading the news and every time I watch The Notebook. I have all the feelings about everything and want to save the world. Or maybe I use to do/be all these things (minus the PC thing, still trucking along here).

Being in a different culture, one that even after a year of explanations and living in, you still don’t understand the priorities, lack of human rights and abundance of corruption and nepotism makes being compassionate hard. Being harassed and seeing the daily mistreatment of others makes being compassionate really hard.  I think to some degree it is necessary to become somewhat hardened to things that would otherwise make you recoil. If I cried every time I saw a dog that looked as though it were on the verge of starvation I would be a sobbing mess every time I left the home. If I broke down for every dirty child walking around with a hungry belly I would lay in bed all day paralyzed with grief. So what does an outsider do in this situation, when they can’t fix the problem because it is systemic and no one has the conviction to change it, when one can’t be completely be immune to it because being jaded and callous takes away who they are at their core but also can’t breakdown at the things that once would have made their mushy heart melt into a puddle of pity and guilt of what we have and what others don’t….? I can’t speak for many others, but for the people who I have talked to extensively about it, we have agreed, we have become hardened, cynical. When you can’t fix things but can’t completely ignore them, life becomes this weird purgatory for compassion.

When I left for PC I think I was one of the most compassionate people I knew, but after being here for over a year, I find myself not even flinching at things that would have once brought me to tears. I walked past an elderly woman begging for money on the side of the road the other day. I briskly walked past her, making a mental note…If I stopped to help her or give her money I would have to do it for everyone. Then I actually stopped in my tracks. Who was this stranger who could be so heartless? In that moment I was unrecognizable to myself, and I felt such a deep shame in the person that I was in the moment.

On another side of compassion…the Religious Freedom Act was recently passed in good Ol’ Indiana. A relative of mine recently posted this to fb

This makes zero sense to me. I think, in part, because it lacks anything resembling logic. At least that’s how I feel.

But then I was thinking more on it. People feel that way for a reason. The reason is certainly lost on me, but I would like to think people aren’t blindly discriminating against others for the sheer fact that hate and inequality is fun, right? But maybe, just maybe (I am choosing to believe) people are discriminating because they are ignorant, because they don’t understand…because they have lost their compassion, and the ability to find the humanity in another human. Oh shit. Yeah, that hits close to home. In many ways I think I am just as guilty about being as uncompassionate as the next person. And in the sentiment of a dark skinned, socialist dude who believed in loving everyone… maybe I shouldn’t cast a stone since I am far from innocent from also discriminating, from also erasing someone’s humanity because I didn’t like or agree with them. So today, the change starts with me. Today I will become more compassionate. If someone has hateful words, or discriminates I will see their humanity. And keep in mind that being human means making mistakes, it means being unfair and far from perfect. And I am sure there will be days that I fail miserably and hate everyone and everything and will relish in the failure of my enemies as if they were my own successes. But I will try to make those days fewer and fewer until I recognize me again, and am proud of the person I see. And this all sounds like some super hippie reciprocal altruism, self-transcendence bullshit, and maybe it is, but what could be so bad about either of those things. If we could all make one small secession to living in our own self-centric world that would be upwards of 7 billion people making the world a slightly better place. That seems kinda doable. And I know it will fail, and I will fail, but it is a failure that I will be proud of and will get up and try again and again, knowing I will never get it right, but each face-plant will bring me that much closer to being a better person, and I am okay with that.   

So here is to being the change we want to see in the world, to living our neighbors (the breeders, the mos and everything in between), and to loving ourselves.

Sam “Moon flower love child” out.  

If anyone has interest in Krista's TED talk here is the link

TED talk