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.

Adding to the Positive (in Today's World)

The world needs huge positive energy to fight against
the negative forces. Go to the center of your inner begin
and generate that positive energy for the welfare
of humanity.    -Amit Ray


"The world needs."  Yes, it does.  And where is this positive energy going to come from, if it doesn't come from us?  Who is going to contribute to the world in positive ways if we don't?  Sometimes, though, it seems like an overwhelming task, something immense to ask of us when we're doing all we can just to get by.  How can my tiny bit of positive energy affect the world as a whole?  How can my optimistic words or actions help those people who are suffering greatly right now?

And because it's very easy to feel this way, to think that our thoughts or actions can't be helpful on a grand scale, we give up, and we simply plod through life, beaten down by the sheer overwhelmingness of the awful things that are happening to other people.

But the important thing to remember is that our positive actions don't have to affect the entire world.  They don't have to bring hope to millions of people.  We live in a large world, yes, but we also live in our own little worlds, surrounded by the people who share that world with us.  My world doesn't even consist of the town or city I live in--it consists of me and the people with whom I have contact, one way or another.  My obligation to the world is simply to do the best I can to help to expand positive energy in my world, and then trust that it will ripple out from there.

If I encourage a student today, then she may go home and do something positive for her little brother (whom I shall never meet), or her parents, or another student at school, simply because she feels more positive now.  And then, it's very possible that her positive action for her sister's sake will make her brother feel very good, and that he'll do something positive for someone else.

If I compliment someone who works in a store or a restaurant or in a public service position, then there's always the chance that the person will then "pass it on," complimenting or helping someone else in some way.

We're talking about ripples, about waves that expand from a central point and grow larger as they go, turning still water into moving water, just for a few moments.  We don't have to change the world--we just need to start a ripple, turn on one light switch, light one candle.  You can choose your own metaphor.

The world needs positive energy, especially during these rather dark days when people are reacting more to their fear than to their love, more to their anger than to their compassion.  And it's got to start somewhere, or it will never start at all.

Let it begin with us--you and me.  We can't change the world in one fell swoop, but we can contribute to the positive energy that this world so badly needs.

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?

Legacy

I often wonder about the legacy I'll be leaving.  In many ways, I wish my legacy were more expansive--my influence is rather limited, and I'm not quite sure just how the people I've affected even see what I've passed on to them.  When all is said and done, of course, none of that matters--what will matter on the day I die will be how I feel about what I've given to life and the people in it, and what others have gotten from me as a result of my giving.

But I'm a member of my society, and as a society, we really do seem to have stopped paying attention to things like leaving legacies for our young people, doing things that we can offer with pride to them, things that will contribute in positive ways to the world that they live in and will live in after we're gone.  Heck, we're even destroying the planet they need to live on for the rest of their lives and yes, that legacy is ours.  It belongs to those of us who have been around for a long time and who have continued to contribute to the status quo without making any changes in the ways that we do things that will make things better for our young people as they live their lives after we've departed.

Can I solve the climate crisis all by myself?  Of course not.  Can I solve the problems that we in the States have with a consistently growing number of mass shootings, especially in schools?  No.  Can I fix an educational system that is simply broken, and that is not adequately preparing most students for their futures?  Not on my own, I can't.  And even if I were to get 50 or 1,000 people together to work on the problem, we still couldn't fix it without the agreement of the state governments, the local school boards, the citizens of the country, school boards, and so many other groups that the task would probably never be done.

So what does that mean?  Does it mean that I can't leave a positive legacy?  Does it mean that I can't contribute to the world in positive ways?  No, it doesn't.  Because while my options certainly are limited by reality, I still do have options.  There are definitely legacies that I can leave behind on a very small level that may even have a strong ripple effect, helping the legacy to grow even after I'm gone.

I can leave a legacy of encouragement.  The more I encourage other people, especially young people, the more they learn the strength and power of encouragement, and the more likely they are to become encouragers themselves.  I can leave a legacy of hard work by providing a model of hard work that's balanced with rest and that doesn't take over my life and ruin relationships and hobbies.  I can work hard and still enjoy life, and that type of legacy is strong, indeed.

I can leave legacies of fairness, of compassion, of humor, of understanding, of appreciation, of wonder, of acceptance, of fairness--the list seems to be pretty long, doesn't it?  A legacy is what we leave as role models, and what we leave as laws and what we leave as realities.  I may not be able to solve the climate crisis, but I can drive my car less and put myself in situations in which I can walk or bike where I need to go.  I may not be able to solve the problems of violence in our society, but I can do my best to teach others to love one another and to respect one another and to never resort to violence as a way to deal with problems in life.

We're on this planet a short time, and we want to contribute what we can.  Most of us will never contribute in huge ways, affecting millions of people, but we can contribute in small ways that affect relatively few people--and still leave a legacy that is positive and lasting.  We just have to trust that when we do good, on no matter how small a level, we're contributing in the world in ways that will help others and that will make a lasting impression.  The world needs us to do good, and we can make our own lives much more positive when we do our best to leave a legacy that we can be proud of.

Sometimes Things Come Crashing--A Paragraph a Day

I find it important to keep in mind that things like holidays can be catalysts, and not always in a good way.  This year, for example, I've experienced a great deal of loss in several different ways.  And while I'm not dwelling on the losses, once Christmas comes around, I've found that those things come back to me very quickly and very forcefully, even though I didn't know exactly what was happening.  It wasn't like I was focusing on the loss and therefore became miserable--rather, I started feeling very strange, and only after a little while did I realize exactly why I was feeling the way I was.  And if this can happen to me, then I can only imagine how other people are feeling about their own losses, many of which have been much more drastic than those I've experienced.  It's a good reminder to me to show compassion all that I can, and to withhold judgment about why people are feeling the things they feel, and reacting the ways they're reacting.  I can do much more good in the world understanding people more than I judge them, and there's nothing like a bit of my own pain to remind me just how much pain other people are feeling, usually solely as a result of outside forces.  I don't want to be the person who judges someone else and therefore decides to be judgmental rather than compassionate; I really want to be the person who shows compassion and thus helps someone else to work their way through problems they're experiencing, and there are very few teachers more effective than my own pain and loss to help me to understand the pain and loss that other people are feeling.  It's important to mourn and grieve when we feel our own loss, and it's also important to try to understand the lessons that our pain and loss are teaching us, even as we're going through the misery that we feel.  If we learn from our loss, it's a much better thing than if we just feel sorry for ourselves.

Little Ones--A Paragraph a Day

I sometimes get a bit pessimistic about humanity when I read the news and see all the awful things that human beings do to each other just because they believe different things or have different color skin or live in a different area.  It's difficult to constantly see such cruelty and lack of respect for one another, but life is what it is, right?  And we have to deal with it, don't we?  But one thing that keeps me hopeful about human beings is making sure that I continue to have contact with young people, and that's where my teaching comes in.  I deal with lots of high school students who are kind and considerate and who want to make the most of their lives but don't want to step all over other people in order to do so.  I have students who really do want to learn, and who do everything they can in order to do so.  And my wife works with even younger kids--the twins she nannies will be four in a couple of months.  She told me that today, the girl asked her to help her write a Christmas card for her parents.  And without any prompting, this is what she told my wife she wanted to write to her mom:  "Thank you so much for always taking care of us," and she wanted to say the same thing to her dad, but adding:  "and always being there when mommy is away."  The fact that a four-year-old can think that way fills me with not just admiration, but also hope--there have to be more kids just like her in the world, and one day I hope that they're in charge.  And then things will be much, much better than they are now.

What Does Christmas "Spirit" Mean?--A Paragraph a Day

I love the idea of Christmas Spirit, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what the term actually means.  It's probably one of those things for which we have the standard kind of answer--"it means something different for everyone"--but it would be nice if we could define it and understand it clearly.  Not because I'm the type of person who needs and wants to have everything catalogued and defined according to a certain set of criteria, but because it seems to be such a positive concept, one that can bring us true joy if we knew how to access it, or harness it, or adopt it.  After all, the Spirit of Christmas would have to include a love of giving, and it would have to include a love for virtually everyone.  It would exclude everything like greed and selfishness, and it wouldn't have anything to do with judgment or bias.  I think that if I want to go out and model the Spirit of Christmas, I would have kind words for everyone I met, and I would be as generous as I possibly could be, given my means.  I wouldn't treat others with harshness, and I wouldn't make them feel that I didn't approve of them for any reason.  If I were to model Christmas Spirit, I would listen carefully when others talked, and I would encourage them as much as I could.  I would be inclusive rather than exclusive, encouraging rather than discouraging, and loving rather than hateful.  I would show gratitude often, and I would take gracefully from those who wished to give to me, while giving wholeheartedly to those who were willing to take from me.  The Christmas Spirit is a spirit that we can adopt for every day of our lives if we choose to do so, and I hope that one day, I'll regularly be treating others as kindly in May or August as I do in December.  The Spirit I share is my choice, after all, and I'd like it to be a caring, loving, compassionate spirit all the time.

Heart or Brain?--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes I think too much with my brain, and not enough with my heart.  Actually, I take that back--it's not sometimes.  Almost always, I think too much with my brain, and not enough with my heart.  I try to approach things logically, I try to figure things out, I try to come up with solutions.  I'm not as bad as it as I used to be--as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I grew up with some pretty extreme issues concerning control of situations--but I still do it far more than I'd like, or even than I'd like to admit.  I've grown up trusting my brain to work its way through virtually everything, rather than allowing my heart to let me know that some things are just fine the way they are, and I don't need to spend any effort trying to "fix" them.  My heart accepts others more quickly and more fully than my brain does, and it appreciates some of the blessings of my life more fully than my brain does.  My brain likes to find fault with things, and it likes to find ways to improve them; my heart accepts and appreciates things as they are, and it allows them to be just what they are without change, and it helps me to show that appreciation and love much more than my brain does.  I know that people in my life have been affected by me in many more positive ways when I've been following my heart rather than my brain, and one thing I truly want to keep doing is raising the percentage of time I allow my heart to be the dominant force in my life rather than my brain.  I'm a more caring and compassionate person when I do so.

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.

Learning Something New--A Paragraph a Day

So far, I'm failing pretty miserably at posting a paragraph a day here.  That's okay, of course--the world will keep spinning and moving through the solar system whether I write a paragraph or not--but it is a good lesson for me.  I'm learning just how easy it is for me to get caught up in day-to-day life and forget to do something like a paragraph online, whether I made that promise to myself or not.  I'm also seeing very clearly just how quickly quite a few days can pass.  It doesn't seem possible that my last paragraph was four days ago, yet that's the truth of the matter.  It helps me to gain a sense of perspective, and to sympathize with other people who are having a hard time meeting deadlines or getting things done on time--especially my students.  Personally, I've always been pretty good at making sure that things get done and at meeting deadlines, and it's kind of surprising to me to see my performance at this particular task.  But now I get to see if I'm actually learning anything or not.  Will February be just like January, or will I be able to do better at fulfilling this resolution?  Will I take something from these lessons and do better and treat other people with more compassion because of what I'm learning from my experience?  Here's hoping that even though I certainly have NOT written a paragraph a day despite making a resolution to do so, I'll get something from this experience that will help me to become a better and more compassionate human being.  We'll see!

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.

The Strength of the Gentle

I grew up thinking that strength meant being strong, showing strength in physical and emotional ways.  It meant being unyielding, and it always implied pushing beyond limits and pushing others to push themselves beyond their personal limits.  It was an ideal that everyone was supposed to live up to:  always being strong and never giving in.

Gentleness, on the other hand, was seen as weakness in many cases.  A gentle response to a problem was lame and ineffective.  A gentle approach to a problem made no sense, because we surely can't "overcome" problems with a gentle approach.

But what if most problems don't need to be overcome?  What if, instead, they need to be understood and worked through?  What if gentleness is an approach that works more effectively in the long run, long past the time that the short-term fix that's based on strength or force ceases to be effective any more?  Many people never will find out the effectiveness of gentleness because they'll always be convinced that they have to be strong in order to get things done.

Gentleness means recognizing that the world around us is fragile, especially
other people. It is recognizing our own capacity to do harm and choosing 
to be tender, soft-spoken, soft-hearted, and careful. When we are gentle
we touch the world in ways that protect and preserve it.  Being gentle
doesn't mean being weak; gentleness can be firm, even powerful.
-unattributed, Wisdom Commons

I was fortunate as a teacher to discover that the vast majority of my students responded much, much better to my gentleness than they did to my strength.  They had enough "strong" teachers--they didn't need any more criticism, harshness, inflexibility, or punishment.  The vast majority of them were doing the best they could, and they really appreciated it when I treated them gently rather than harshly.

Sometimes we feel pressure to be "in control" of things, and many of our so-called "teachers" in life--parents, relatives, bosses, and anyone else who has influence over us--try to convince us that being "in control" means that other people will bend to our will and act in ways we want them to.  The kid who's making noise will shut up; the subordinate at work will do what they're told; nobody will argue with you for any reason at all.

But the gentle approach isn't concerned with directly controlling situations.  Rather, the gentle person understands that often, things don't go right because someone doesn't understand something and needs to be taught, or someone is doing something wrong because they're hurting in an important and painful way, or a person doesn't respond well to suggestions or requests because they simply don't understand the importance of doing something in a certain way.  In these cases--and many others--gently helping the person involved is generally much more effective than trying to "force" things to happen our way.

Don't judge the gentle; their gentleness is stronger than your fears and angers.
Don't judge those who have lost their gentleness; you haven't lived their lives.
In all people, hope for the gentleness to return and see gentleness
for the beauty that it is.
-C. JoyBell C.

One of the most important things that we can do in our lives is to adopt gentleness as an approach to the rest of life.  When we're gentle, we allow others to be themselves rather than trying to force them to be something else.  When we're gentle, we become an ally to other people rather than an enemy.  When we're gentle, we show others their worth and value rather than trying to convince them that they're worthless if they don't do things our way.  When we're gentle, we help people to heal rather than opening up new wounds.

Yes, there are times when a strong and unyielding approach is more effective, even necessary.  But these times represent the exception rather than the rule.

A gentle approach to the world shows respect and allows others to keep their dignity.  It shows the world that we're not so insecure that we must dominate and control others.  It allows us to be an ally of life rather than a foe of life.  And for ourselves, it gives us peace of mind and peace of heart when we focus on a gentle understanding rather than stressful conflict.  Gentleness allows us to be in touch with our higher selves, that part of who we are that is able to share love, compassion, understanding, and hope with our fellow human beings.

In the broad picture of life, let me always be a person who chooses a gentle approach whenever I can.

Read more on gentleness here.