Sharing Compassion (in Today's World)

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-Albert Einstein


In this age of division, is it possible that compassion is our key to somehow finding unity once more?  Some of our leaders want us to think that in order to end division, we must "defeat" those who disagree with us.  Others feel that the key to unity is finding common ground even among our division and disagreement, to acknowledge the rights that others have to think and feel as they do, to accept them and their thoughts, and to work together even when we disagree on some points.

Compassion is "feeling with" someone, trying to understand their actions and thoughts and motivations.  It's rather easy to feel compassion for someone who obviously deserves it--the person who's been injured, the friend who has lost their home, the someone who has been abused.  But when we can't easily see the actual sadness, when we don't know the sources of a person's problems, it can be much more difficult.  That person who is against what I'm for more than likely has had some very poor teachers in their life, people who taught them to hate and to resent rather than to love and respect.  And we don't know what led them to actually believe this teacher, to follow their advice.  But it's very possible that even though this person is doing bad things, they're in great pain themselves, and it may be that pain that's leading them to hate, to judge, to harm others.

Since we can never really know what's going on in another's life, it seems that the most effective approach we can take is to make compassion our default response.  That doesn't mean that we should accept and approve of all that other people do, but if we can act around them with compassion, then we can understand that their harmful actions may be the result of great pain in their lives, rather than character flaws or simply being "wrong" or "stupid."

Many people have received poor educations, and it would be unfair of us to judge their words or actions by the same standards that we would expect from someone who's been educated deeply and broadly.  Some people are so afraid of everything that they base their prejudices and biases on their fear, and not on anything concrete or even logical.  And most of them never realize just how much power they give to their own fears.

In a world in which it seems like compassion is dying, just who's going to keep it alive?  Well, I can, and you can.  We're not obligated to do so, of course, but compassion sure seems important enough to me that I want to do all that I can to make sure that it doesn't disappear completely from humanity.  I must foster it, maintain it, share it freely--even with those who don't "seem" to deserve it, and let it be a guiding force in my own life if I'm ever going to have the chance to call myself a "compassionate person."  And on the day that I die, that's a term that I hope more than one person uses to describe who I was when I was here.

Kindness Can Still Go a Long Way (in Today's World)

Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care
and kindness of our parents.  And then later on in our life,
when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are
again dependent on the kindness of others.  And since at
the beginning and end of our lives, we are so dependent
on others' kindness, how can it be in the middle
that we neglect kindness towards others?

the Dalai Lama


We see and feel a whole lot of negative energy in the world today--so much so that it's practically overwhelming.  I often find myself thinking that with so much hatred and anger and malice and prejudice constantly being shown right before our eyes, how can we possibly do anything in our own small ways that will make any sort of difference?  And when that happens to me, I remind myself that my responsibility isn't to change the world--it's to affect in positive ways the worlds that I live in--the world of my family, the world of my friends, the world of my workplace.  And in that world, I can contribute to the positive energy very simply by being kind.  If someone angers me, I can show patience and kindness; if someone is feeling down, I can give encouraging words; if someone has a particular need, I can meet that need, or teach that someone how to meet that need themselves; if someone's feeling lonely or isolated, I can give them a small and simple gift--even a simple candy bar can be a wonderful gift.  There are many, many ways that I can be kind, many ways that I can contribute to the positive energy of this world we live in.

My kindness, of course, isn't going to fix the world.  It isn't going to cause authoritarian regimes to crumble, and it isn't going to fix the lives of families that have been terribly harmed by unfair and uncalled-for detentions of loved ones.  It isn't going to restore the jobs of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been fired this year for no good reason.  But we have to start somewhere, and in my heart I know that if there's any good place to start adding to the positive energy of the world, then kindness just may be it.  And if we spread our modest kindness with love in our hearts, then we're also adding the positive energy of love as well.  And we can definitely hope that our kindness will be passed on, which will make things even better.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed, to feel that what we do means nothing.  But kindness never means nothing, and in today's world, our attempts to keep kindness from going extinct can only help the world, no matter how modest our efforts may seem to us.

Gentleness--Living in Today's World

Is the concept of Living Life Fully even helpful these days?  Are all of the words and ideas and concepts that encourage people to live their lives fully out of date and irrelevant?  This series is inspired simply by the state of the world today--we're living in a world of division and anger and even hatred, and at times it seems impossible to feel any sort of peace with all that's going on.  It seems for many people that their stability and safety in life are being stripped away, leaving them to fend for themselves in a world that doesn't seem to want to help.  Personally, I'm not at all fond of the directions our world is taking, and I'm very frustrated that there seems to be little to nothing that I'm able to do to make anything better for anyone--I just have to go along for the ride as everyone else does.  As I go, though, I want to look for the little things I might be able to do to make the world a more pleasant place for others--spreading kind words, being considerate and polite, encouraging and complimenting--all little things, but for someone with no real wealth and no way to accumulate wealth, they're ways that I can contribute to the positive energy of the world--and when we add my contribution to your contribution to his contribution to the contributions of thousands of other people, suddenly it doesn't seem so trivial.

Can you commit to spreading as much positive energy, as many positive thoughts and ideas, as you can each day?  I really do believe that it's going to take each one of us who truly wants a kind and gentle world in which EVERYONE feels loved and accepted to focus on our own efforts, and make sure that they're consistent and consistently kind and positive.

The world seems to be in an awful state--but is it hopeless?  I hope not--the history of humankind has always been a rollercoaster ride with its ups and downs and brutal moves from left to right and back again, and we find ourselves in one of the valleys now, when human nature is being shown in so many ugly and unpleasant ways.  But I still have my life, and I have my own world to live in, my microworld among the macroenvironments that make up this planet and its people and all of the natural world that's here with us.  One thing that I can do on a tiny level is try to explore the concept of Living Life Fully and how it can be achieved in a world that seems so darned unfriendly.  After all, my doctorate is in Teaching and Learning, and I've done a lot of learning in my life.  Perhaps it's time for me to pass on what I've learned in small doses, with the intent of helping others to see more clearly some of the concepts that I've learned about, and to help others put into practice strategies that can help them to get more out of the lives that they're living.

So here goes.  Today I start with Gentleness, a concept that many people today see as weakness, but which can be one of the most effective strategies we can adopt in the effort to live our lives more fully.  We must remember that our gentleness doesn't need to be world-changing in order to be important or effective.  But it will be life-changing, both for us and for those people who are on the receiving end of our gentle actions.


Gentleness

Only the weak are cruel.  Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.    -Leo Buscaglia


We're seeing a lot of cruelty in the world today, and it can be very tempting to want to completely do away with it, to want to change the hearts of cruel people so that they're no longer cruel.  We can't do that, though.  No matter how many people post negative attacks on cruel people on social media, the fact is that tomorrow, the cruel people will still be here, and they'll still be cruel.  We change very little by attacking, but we can change a lot by being gentle and kind.  Today I'm going to do my best to be gentle:  to give a gentle response to an aggressive person; to gently remind someone that being kind to others is important; to gently correct someone with the truth when they're spewing lies.  Gentleness doesn't always have immediate effects, but the long-term effects can be extremely awesome; we just have to trust that our gentleness today will have a positive effect on the world tomorrow.  We can let the weak be cruel, but it would be a terrible thing to emulate them simply to placate them.  We can disagree with them aggressively, which will probably cause more conflict, or we can gently correct them, and put our hopes in long-term effects rather than short-term returns.  When we're gentle, we're giving hope to others that perhaps things can get better, and I hope that my gentleness will sooth an aching soul rather than rile it up even further.

We're in This Together

You and I, for some reason, have ended up spending much of our time together on this planet.  Perhaps we've never met in a physical way, but we do share a connection, if in no other way than through the words on this site or on Living Life Fully.  It boggles the mind to think that of all the people who have ever lived on this planet, we've ended up being right here, right now, and having some sort of connection to each other.  And there are some seven billion other people sharing this planet with us right now, also.  And I think we'd be amazed to find out how much we have in common with so many of those people.

Just looking at the computer that I'm using right now, I see that it's made in China.  Of course that means that a couple of years ago, someone went to work in China and worked on putting together this exact computer that I have now--and it's surely the result of the work of several people in the same factory, each putting in their own pieces on an assembly line.  And not only that, but the different pieces that make up the computer--the screen, the processor, the battery, the hard drive, etc.--came from a completely different place and were put together by completely different people.  And all of those things were made from different raw materials that were mined or produced in different places.  I could probably trace the elements of this computer to hundreds, if not thousands of people who worked on it or who provided materials used in it, all over the world.

And we all breathe the same oxygen, and drink the same water--without either one of them, we would die very quickly.  We eat foods prepared in different ways, but that originate in similar ways.  When I go to a restaurant, I'm connected to my server and the cook and the host or hostess for a short while, but also to the farms that provided the chicken, the potatoes, the vegetables.  Someone made the bread or rolls that I eat, and the wine had to come from somewhere, and is the result of the work of many different people at many different stages.  We are simply part of a greater whole, and so is everyone else.

And so is everyone else!  All these people around us every day are here on this planet with us, at the same time as us.  What does this mean?  For one thing, if we can keep in mind that we're all sharing this planet for a very short period of time, it may be easier for us to see everyone else as "fellow passengers to the grave," as Dickens referred to us all, rather than strangers who may or may not be nice to us.  We're all experiencing what it means to be human beings at the same time, often in the same places.  If we can truly understand this connection, it may make it easier for us to treat those other people kindly, with decency and respect, and not let them hurt our feelings with their mistakes or their indifference.  We're all learning lessons about life as we go, and not everyone learns as quickly as everyone else.  Perhaps that person who just was rude to you is acting out insecurities in the only ways they've been taught to do so, no matter how inappropriate or harmful those ways are.

Life is a challenge.  It offers many difficult moments along with the moments of joy and even ecstasy.  How we meet those challenges is up to us, and how we treat other people as they deal with their own challenges is also up to us.  If we can remember, though, that we're all learning and growing and that almost no one has reached any sort of peak or pinnacle of growth, we can be more kind and compassionate as we witness others make mistakes that often affect us.  We're all here doing the best we can, and those other people in your life may really need a smile and a greeting this morning, even if they regularly ignore us when we walk by.  How we act and how we treat others is up to us, after all, and shouldn't be a result of how others treat us.  Just because others treat us rudely doesn't give us the right to pass that rudeness on to someone else who hasn't treated us rudely at all.

We're in this together.  Do we want to be that small portion of glue that holds things together, or do we want to contribute to the separation of the world?  Everyone can use a kind word or two each day, and who's to give those words to them, if not us?

An Annual Shift in Thinking--A Paragraph a Day

It's December 27th, which means that it's time for us to start thinking about the new year coming up, and to start thinking of things like New Year's resolutions, things we want to accomplish in the coming year, habits we want to leave behind here in the old year. . . simply a multitude of thoughts about who we want to be in the coming year versus who we have been in the current year.  Most of us look to make changes, with the assumption that changes are necessary.  We want to go into the coming year and make ourselves "better."  But in what ways are we lacking?  Yes, we all can improve in certain ways, but do we absolutely need to?  Are we not good enough as we are?  I know that I always look for areas in which I can improve, but I rarely consider making a New Year's resolution such as "continue being kind," or "keep on loving other people."  I think that what I would really like to see happen is to have the thoughts that we feel during Christmas--"What would make this person happy?" or "What can I give that will truly make a difference?"--follow us into our New Year's resolution moments so that we can resolve to be kind and loving and compassionate for an entire year, to as many people as possible.  If we would be able to do this and actually follow through on the resolutions, what a great world we could make!

Christmas--A Paragraph a Day

Every year I have to ask myself why I like Christmas so much, and I never come up with a satisfactory answer.  It isn't for religious reasons, because the holiday really has gone far past its religious roots, and if my focus were on religion, I'd probably dislike the holiday more than I like it.  It isn't for the gift-giving, because that seems to have gone over the top for most people, becoming more like a competition to give the best gift or a way to buy other people's love and affection.  I think that the bottom line for me is that it's a season when so many people are thinking of others more than they're thinking of themselves.  Our focus shifts from inward (which is very often very positive) to outward, and we're more concerned with the other people in our lives than we are in ourselves.  In my family this was rarely the case--we spent most of our holidays hoping that dad wouldn't go out drinking on the 23rd and not come home until the 26th or 27th.  Our holiday thoughts weren't on what we could do for others, but what we hoped wouldn't happen to us.  Since then, though, I've come to see Christmas more as Scrooge's nephew sees it in a book that I read every Christmas, starting on my birthday on the 20th:  "I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"  I think that Dickens definitely hit the nail on the head there, and I know that I will always love Christmas for just that reason.  Here's hoping that your Christmas, too, is a wonderful one!

Karma? I Don't Want to Think about It--A Paragraph a Day

I believe in Karma to a certain extent--I'm not sure that I believe in it as many people define it, but I do believe that there is reward for people who consistently do good and act kind and give instead of take all the time.  I just don't want to think about it.  If I think about Karma, it seems to me, then I'm going to be committing acts of goodness only in order to be rewarded for them.  I'm going to help other people just in the hopes of the universe passing something good to me in return for my actions.  But I don't want to be thinking about my rewards when I perform an action that I think is good.  Rather, I want to commit such an act because I know that I'm doing something for someone who needs it.  I want to give knowing that I'm fulfilling a need, not because I'm hoping for some sort of return on my investment.  I don't want to be wondering constantly where my reward is--I simply want to do good things for other people because they're the right things to do.  I want to give because it's right to give; I want to share because I truly want to help someone else who needs for someone to share with them.  Yes, I love the concept of Karma, but I hope never to think of it as motivation for being kind or helpful or loving.  If it affects me, then fine, but if it doesn't, I'll still be okay because I know that when I saw a need, I did what I could to fill it, reward or no, promise or no.

Enlightened?--A Paragraph a Day

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth
can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.
-M. Scott Peck

I want to be enlightened, really I do.  But to be quite honest, I have to admit that I don't think I know what it means to be enlightened.  I've read a lot about it and I've talked to a lot of people about it, but even after decades of thinking about wanting to be enlightened, I truly have no real idea of how close I may be to--or how far away from--the state that I really want to reach.  I can't even define it, which means that there's a decent chance that I already am enlightened, depending on the definition.  I definitely wouldn't give myself credit for that, but I have to remember that if I don't even know the definition of something like enlightenment, then who knows if I'm there or not?  Personally, I'm going to do my best to keep working towards enlightenment by doing my best to be kind, by doing my best to be loving, by doing my best to be compassionate and considerate and mindful.  It's not that difficult to do if I truly commit myself to doing so--it just takes a series of decisions about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it.  Perhaps one day I'll reach the state and actually know that I've reached it, but for now, I'll just keep working at it.

Kind Today--A Paragraph a Day

I'm going to try to be extra kind today.  It's not always easy for me to do because I teach at a high school and some of the young people there do some really crappy things, but for today I'm going to try to focus on kindness no matter what.  I try to do this as much as I can, anyway, but I so often get distracted from the goal that I forget kindness and focus on whatever I get caught up in, whatever it may be.  I can be kind in many ways--I can share kind words, I can give small gifts (chocolate comes to mind), I can help someone with some task that they need help with, I can clean up a mess that needs to be cleaned, I can simply be there for someone who needs someone else to listen.  Being kind doesn't mean that I have to spend tons of money or that I have to go far out of my way to do something that I'm uncomfortable doing.  It doesn't mean that I have to be friends with someone whom I find to be very unpleasant or rude.  It doesn't mean that I have to do anything that I think is wrong.  It simply means that I need to be kind instead of impatient, kind instead of neutral, kind instead of aloof.  It really is fairly easy to be kind--the hard part for me is reminding myself constantly that my main goal should be kindness if I really do want to be contributing something positive to this world of ours.

Too Much Self-Improvement?--A Paragraph a Day

The ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant
busy in self-improvement, thus binding him or her to the
fact that the self is still there behind all the improvements.
For why should the ego kill itself?
-Paul Brunton


There's a part of me that's not really too interested in self-improvement any more.  Of course, I still want to become the best version of me that I can be, but that doesn't mean that I constantly have to keep improving.  Rather, at a certain point we simply have to live, to experience our lives for what they are without thinking of the shortcomings we have that we want to demolish.  We have to remember that when we seek to improve ourselves, there's an implicit assumption that there are shortcomings that we have to somehow "fix."  Perhaps we don't need fixing, though.  Perhaps the most important thing that we can do is simply let our lives be our lives, and live them as best as we can.  Maybe it's important that we remind ourselves constantly to be kind and gentle and compassionate, without thinking about a bigger picture or some sort of abstract ideal that we wish to attain.  I really do want to live my life to the fullest, but I think that in the past I've understood that to mean in some way that I have to fix my flaws.  Perhaps when we devote ourselves to our daily lives fully and completely, those flaws either fade away or become completely irrelevant.  Maybe we don't need to fix anything at all.  Maybe we just have to live our lives.

Kindness Isn't That Hard (But I'm Not That Good at It)--A Paragraph a Day

It really surprises me sometimes when I think about kindness and I realize just how little I actually try to be kind, just how little I make kindness my highest priority.  Often, I admit, I don't have to think about it much.  I've tried to make it my default way of acting, but sometimes I seem to get sidetracked and I forget all about kindness when I'm more focused on defensiveness or a feeling of a need for control or simply feeling overwhelmed or tired or even hungry.  It's not so difficult to be kind, though, is it?  It's something that we all can accomplish if we want to, and something that benefits not just the people we're kind to, but ourselves as well.  The kind word or action can even start a ripple that spreads out and affects more people than those with whom we have direct contact; one of the beauties of kindness is the fact that it does spread, and that we never know just how far our individual kindness reaches.  I'd like to be better at being kind--more focused on being kind and trying to be kind to others--and I'm constantly trying to improve when I actually think about it.  Of course, some kindnesses are in disguise--I think I'm kinder to my students when I hold them to standards and don't pass something that should be failing--but even so, they are kindnesses.  One day I hope to live a life of kindness every day, and I hope that it doesn't take me too long to get there.

Can We Teach Kindness?--A Paragraph a Day

Kindness is often on my mind when I'm teaching high school students.  It's one thing to teach things like English and Spanish and Literature, but it's something altogether different to try to teach young people to be kind to one another, to show each other compassion and understanding.  Most young people do their best to be good people, of course, but it's very tempting for them to say those words that will make someone laugh, but hurt someone else.  It's easy for them to be inconsiderate--or perhaps it's difficult for them to be considerate when their main focus in life is currently themselves.  It comes with the age, doesn't it?  They're growing and learning and trying to do the best they can in everything, but they're still self-centered.  So how do we teach kindness?  Honestly, I don't really try because I'm not sure that something like that can be taught.  I do model it every chance I get, which is almost all day, every day, but I don't look at it as something that I can teach to someone else.  Rather, I make sure to point out the negative results of unkind words and actions, and I leave it to them to learn it rather than thinking that I can actually teach it.  After all, they have to want to have the positive results of being kind in their lives, and the best that I can do, I think, is to help them to see clearly the positive results of kindness on one's own spirit.  I don't know how effective the lesson is, but I believe that they can learn to be kind by wanting to feel the positive feelings that come from having been kind to someone else.

People Helping People--A Paragraph a Day

I'm showing the film Thirteen Lives to one of my classes this week.  It's a wonderful movie that shows just how good and how kind people can be to each other, and the kinds of risks that people are willing to take, the kinds of sacrifices that people are willing to make, in order to help out other human beings whom they've never even met before.  When thirteen young people are trapped in a cave by flooding, the lengths to which people are willing to go to save them are truly inspiring, and it's a very nice thing in this world to watch a story about people helping people selflessly, rather than the typical fare that's presented to us in the name of entertainment of people hurting other people, for whatever the reason.  I like to remind myself that the world truly is meant for this--kindness and compassion, rather than hatred, greed, and harm.  It's hard to see through the haze sometimes, but films like this help to clear the air and help us to see what human beings are capable of if we allow compassion to be a guiding force in our lives.