Choosing Compassion

Compassion. The first time this word ever came into my consciousness was when I was married to an alcoholic. I was attending a 12 step program in order to learn more about the disease of alcoholism and what I could do to help improve my marriage which was being torn apart by this disease. I ended up learning more about myself than I had anticipated going in - why I made the choices I’d made throughout my life and how those choices contributed to the circumstances I found myself in at that point on my journey. Never did I think that I would learn to have compassion for the very people who had caused me the most pain in my life!

An abusive father, peers who rejected this shy little girl, boyfriends who couldn’t make a commitment, and husbands (two of them) who were either emotionally abusive or unavailable - all make up a short list of those who brought me nothing but heartache and made me feel worthless as a human being. What I didn’t realize is that I had choices. Choices I didn’t even know existed! And part of that was learning to understand that people who abused, rejected, couldn’t commit, or were emotionally unavailable all had pain of their own they were dealing with. Who knew? And my choice was to recognize their pain and feel compassion for them, or to continue allowing myself to be hurt by them. The compassion didn’t come easily at first. Believe me, I wanted them and everyone else to know how much they had hurt me, and in order to do that, I had to continue hurting. When we are deeply wounded, the last thing we want to do is feel sorry for those who wounded us. It seems wrong somehow, like we’re letting them off the hook. But once I allowed myself to be open to another way of thinking and being, I was surprised at how healing it was for me.

When thinking about my father, I realized that I really didn’t have a clue about what his life had been like for him. There had to be something that caused him to take out his irrational and extreme anger on an innocent and helpless child! Anyone who had been raised to feel loved and cherished would not do that! (The very thought of this still makes me weep for him!) This eye-opening realization allowed me, for the first time in my life, to feel true compassion for the man whom I believed was the cause of all my troubles. It’s true that his treatment of me was wrong - compassion does not excuse inappropriate behavior. It only understands that there is more to any person than what we see on the surface. And it allows the one who feels it toward another to be released from the bonds of victimhood. I no longer see the perpetrator as an all-powerful being who holds the key to my happiness, but as simply another human being on this journey called life… right alongside me! In this reality, we are equal. I don’t have to love them or even like them, but I can feel compassion toward them for whatever their pain is without feeling responsible for causing it or fixing it. And this frees me to be all that God intended for me without being weighed down by self-pity.

So, remember the next time you find yourself making a judgment of another human being based only on what you see on the surface, you don’t really know the whole story. You don’t know the pain or the guilt or the suffering that this person may have been through - or the negative influences that have affected who they have become.

I often think about this in relation to Michael Jackson and all the people who took advantage of him or used him or treated him with disrespect because of his fame and money as well as his kindness and generosity. Although I realize there is a lot about Michael and his circumstances I do not know, there is one thing which I DO know for certain - and that one thing is that Michael Jackson showed compassion toward those who were suffering and he treated people with respect and dignity. Those were his highest priorities. And that is the bottom line for me. He was an impeccable example of compassion and love for all of humanity. I can only hope that I will be able to live up to his example during the remaining years of my life here on earth.

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May we find it in our hearts to have compassion for those who have hurt us or others we care about, understanding that their actions are a reflection of their pain. When we open our hearts and minds to the idea that others’ hurtful behavior is really a cry for Love, we see it from an entirely different perspective. Compassion becomes possible when we can set our own egos aside and realize that every man and every woman was once an innocent child, and only longs to be loved and understood. We are all God’s children on this spiritual journey together, connected to one another in spirit and in love. Our Source is one and the same. In this way, we are no different, really. We’ve all been given a map to follow. Some have lost their way. Some have never strayed. And others have found their way back to the path that God intended. Whenever we feel contempt toward another of your children, dear God, may we be reminded that we can choose compassion. Amen.

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For anyone interested in reading a poem I wrote about my father last fall entitled "Daddy Dear", you can find it in the November posts on this blog. I think of it as my compassion poem for him... and for me.