It’s a hard time right now, and I’ve been doomscrolling for weeks thinking about Israel, Gaza and hatred in the West.
I’ve been affected by my good habits suffering, and excused return of some bad habits.
Fortunately, I haven’t become an asshole, or so I think.
But someone in my life has – and I’ve been resentful about it for the last few weeks. They have always been kind of a nice asshole, but this person has a lot going on in their life. Family stress and job stress for them were already pretty strong, plus a heavy layer of PTSD. This person is equally pained by the events in Israel, so they’re quite stressed.
While I’ve been resenting this person for a few weeks now, I realized today that they must be really overwhelmed and feeling quite helpless. And I decided to have compassion for them and what they’re going through.
Compassion is such a powerful tool for peace. If everyone exercised it, the world would be a much better place.
I learned about compassion as my father was dying. We had a complicated relationship and missed the opportunity to deeply connect around that. I was forced to have compassion for him, largely after his death, if I wanted to have any meaningful evolution and closure in our relationship. I certainly wasn’t going to get anything from him!
Compassion takes away most of the power that other people’s words and actions have on us. It is the ultimate ego surrender. To have compassion for people who are harming you, or people that are being assholes to you, illuminates the humanity in that person. It connects your humanity with theirs, improving the world one understanding relationship at a time.