The Practice of Compassion
9/17/2015, Milwaukie, OR*
I find myself, increasingly, struggling against this personality-type: Persons (indeed, plural) who, whenever one shows weakness, are most liable to point and castigate.
But show strength, and they’re apt to lunge--unrelentingly, until one is, in fact, weakened. (Rinse, lather, repeat.)
Breaking from such entanglements is a process that (apparently) can’t be artificially hastened; one must take time to recover, as well as calibrate the extent of admissable vulnerabilities, while also maintaining (circumstances permitting) one’s dignity.
In my case, that means taking solace, in memory: When we laughingly, forgivingly acknowledged our respective flaws, and supported one another to do better, going forward.
Those were the days. Now they’re gone—as they needed to be—but I miss that sense of mutual generosity.
Such disengagements—especially when one is rightly furious—are doomed to failure if some compassion can’t be cultivated. Among any warring pair—whether of friends, former partners, or family members—rather than moving on with mutual respect, the unforgiving party continues their arguments, in the hell of his or her own mind. (While also denying—bitterly—his or her bitter state.)
To be lied about—and to have one’s real flaws exaggerated—is heartbreaking, not to mention confidence-shattering. (To whatever extent one’s confidence had been intact.)
But the reaction to that—long-term—can’t be rage (which is unstable and hard to successfully direct, in the first place), without great personal cost.
The practice of compassion (turns out) requires lots of practice. So I’m working on that, along with my acknowledged flaws. Doing my best, for my daughters’ sake, to live as an honest woman, peeling back each layer of once-accepted dogma (self-generated or otherwise) and questioning it, though the unvarnished truth may be bloody painful.
* Second post in series This Time, Last Year.
