On Compassion

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about compassion — about how much it is mediated by what we know, or what we think we know, about another person.

I’m remembering a situation several years ago when I called on a group for help. Doing so took an effort: Since then, I’ve become much more at ease with asking for, receiving, and offering help. But at the time, it was a stretch.

In this case, not only did I hear a quick and resounding “no” — it was delivered with a vehemence that was hard to interpret. Until I learned there was a hidden web of past hurts: My boyfriend at the time had wronged and deeply wounded the person whose job it was from this group to call and tell me “no.”

So my hearing wasn’t off the mark. I really was getting an earful — of old, unhealed hurts, not caused by me, but by someone identified with me.

***

I consider myself compassionate. It is generally fairly easy for me to locate a feeling of tender-heartedness within myself.

But lately I have discovered an unexpected boundary. Because it’s usually automatic, I did not realize I generally rely on my ability to put myself in another’s shoes as the basis for my compassion.

What triggers open-heartedness is not just fellow feeling, but understanding and accepting how the world looks from another’s point of view.

In recent months I have been challenged, not once but in a handful of instances, to find compassion in my interactions with persons whose points of view are almost entirely opaque — at least to me!

This is flummoxing. I’ve been consciously cultivating compassion in this way  for more than 25 years. But apparently, it’s time for a tune-up, a new way forward. When the old way is not working, bring in the paradigm wagon!

How do I find compassion when I cannot locate the spark of fellow feeling?

What happens if I stop groping for an “aha” moment, for some golden key of knowledge to unbind the wellspring within?

What is a more heart-centered approach to compassion? An embodied approach, an approach that takes on faith that each person is seeking truth to the best of their ability in the present moment? An approach that accepts another person without anything approaching understanding?

What is the foundation? Where are my feet in this work?

My present stopgap is to allow my mind to believe there is some piece of knowledge I don’t yet have, and may never have — that if I did, would unlock my understanding.

Perhaps this is another way of saying, quite simply, we are all in Spirit’s hands, and we must trust this is so, rather than pushing to know what is, and isn’t, true in a given situation. Accept what is, even when I don’t know it?

That’s a radically uncomfortable place. But it’s where I am right now. Join me?