While this may be painfully obvious, it bears mentioning. An essential part of compassion is the recognition of suffering. Pain or suffering must be encountered and acknowledged before compassion can even arise. This is true not only for others, but for ourselves.
Now that the pandemic has been ongoing for some time, something is happening in our culture that seems to expect business as usual. As if there have not been a few simultaneous global and national crises piling one on top of another. Depending upon our various circumstances: Race, family situation, employment, health, and many other variables, people feel the effects of our times very differently. Our circumstances might have an amplifying effect that is exponential. Acknowledging this is the first step to opening compassion.
For those of us in western Oregon, the days and days of smoke in the Fall of 2020 was hard (and in California it lasted even longer). It very naturally evoked our stress physiology (hyper- or hypo- arousal, see image below). This is not pathological. It’s our body’s ancient survival mechanism kicking in.
While this assortment of stressors is unusual in most of our lifetimes, our bodies are designed to help get us through situations like this. And although you may be lonely, you are not alone.
Even if you know all about this and you have a daily mindfulness practice, and a home, enough food, and good support, you still might not be doing so well.
Personally, during the fires in the Fall, I got in a Facebook fight — I even started it — with a respected former colleague I had worked with for 10 years. I made assumptions about something he wrote and responded with a self-righteous viewpoint. Dear reader, it did not go well. It turns out, people do not enjoy sanctimoniousness. After he responded, including information about some of the difficulties he is going through (in addition to the fires) I had occasion to apologize both publicly and privately. I was given a lot of grace, and for that I am grateful. If we didn’t have the knowledge of each other’s history, or the relationship we built over the years, this reconciliation would not have happened, and we would have made up inaccurate stories about each other as if we were 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts.
I have recently heard about some of the most skillful people I know putting their foot in it, dropping the ball, falling down on the job. I have heard meltdown stories of the young and old. Conflicts between people who are at the tail end of the list of people with whom they’d like to have a conflict. None of us are at our best, and it all seems too much. Things are difficult right now.
Once we acknowledge this, we can give ourselves and each other the gift of this grace. When we acknowledge difficulty and pain, then compassion — the desire to alleviate suffering — can arise. It is innate, as the photograph below shows. And there is no end to the amount of compassion available. These days, let us practice Radical Compassion. Read on for some offerings in the upcoming weeks that might be supportive for you or people you know.
In the meantime:
Please hold the following resources as mere suggestions or offerings, and not a list of more things you are failing at doing:
Exercise This is important for hypo- and hyper- arousal states. What is getting me going? This guy has 20-minute workouts to an Afro-Caribbean kind of music called soca. So fun! And this guy has a great Middle-Eastern-inflected dance mix for a more free-style move-around-the-house kind of exercise. Find what moves YOU!
Meditate If you are lying in bed with your mind racing and your eyes wide open (and many of us are), you might as well go sit. I like to think that meditating with a racing, anxious, and upset mind is like watching a fireworks display. I find for me, it’s better to sit intentionally with this material –holding it in awareness– than struggling with it in bed. I also find that the events of the world are requiring just a little more time to digest than before, and sitting meditation is one way to do that. I acknowledge that it’s harder than ever to do these things so let’s not forget
Rest We very likely need more rest than before. So if you can take naps, lie down on the ground, pull the covers over your head for 20 minutes, just do it!
