“The road must eventually lead to the whole world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
I write a lot about the road and the journey and how no two of ours are the same. There is truth in that and yet for most of us our trails widen and the areas of understanding and commonality start intersecting and overlapping more and more. It is very rare that something happens to us that is so traumatic that it narrows our road and forces us to shut down our understanding. Perhaps someone has wronged us horribly in some way that the possibility of feeling compassion for their point of view seems bleak. (As a side note here I want to point out that understanding someone’s point of view or feeling compassion does not mean we condone what they do. If someone was a threat to my family or anyone without the ability to defend themselves, I would step in and cause damage to get them to stop. Yes, I would feel compassion for them and in many cases I believe that the spirit of those who cause harm is crying out to be stopped.) As we understand and allow ourselves to walk in the footsteps of others our road leads out to the world. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Blessings, G
“There’s nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can’t be endured – if you have someone to share it with.”
― Spider Robinson
I’ve heard it said that so strong is the need to share that prisoners in solitary will name insects and talk to them as pets just as a way to externalize what has been bottled up for so long. Given my nature, I would do that (heck I even used to name the lobsters my sister would bring home to cook for my parents, until she made me put them in the pot for her but that’s another tale altogether) tho given my nature, i would probably either bring along imaginary friends or find new ones. Still I see this point even more in its absence. It’s when we feel isolated, when we feel ourselves unable to share what we carry inside that the difficulty lies. Each of us can make a difference by reaching out to those who seem too isolated and by being there as we can when we can. Sometimes just having someone to share with can make all the difference in the world. Being there for other people also cuts down on our own isolation for how often can you hear someone sharing their most intimate selves without sharing at least a bit of our own as well? In addition, the more we can open ourselves up to people the more our capacity for compassion grows so there are benefits all around.
Blessings, G
“While pity shows a lack of respect for other human beings, compassion has its roots in a deep respect for others. Pity is an emotion; compassion is a connection. Compassion sees the other as equal. Compassion happens when we care for another person enough to make his or her problems our own.”
― Matt Litton
In the past couple of weeks I have met people who have presented me with an interesting paradox. They simultaneously demand both pity and respect and tho I try hard I just can’t do it. Oh I can feel compassion for them easily enough. I know their lives and know that while they have it rough, so much of their suffering is self-inflicted. Yet they don’t seem to wish for their suffering to end as much as they want people to feel sorry for them and take care of them. Then they resent the people helping them and push them away and then berate their would be benefactors for their lack of respect and bemoan their fate. It’s a cycle that’s rough.
But then we humans are a contrary lot and often the major things we have to work out end up paradoxical in some way. Whether we need self-esteem, connection or openness, we find the oddest ways to stop ourselves from getting them. May all beings be released from suffering indeed. Especially that which we inflict on ourselves.
Blessings, G
“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”
― Madeleine L’Engle
Another trip around the sun has passed. Funny, how the one thing that seems to be happening with each year is that it becomes easier to choose happiness. It may seem cliché yet it becomes more and more obvious that bad moments don’t last so then it becomes a matter of how long we want to dwell in them and that particular flavour of masochism lost its appeal a long time ago. I get my kicks more in calm to enjoyment end of the spectrum now. The trick this past year is balancing that awareness with the knowledge that there are people suffering and work to be done to make life on this planet better for everyone. I have given up feeling that I must suffer to feel compassion for the suffering of another. Yes it hurts to see someone hurting yet I would rather help to relieve what pain I can and feel that joy. In the long run anything that adds to mankind’s total happiness cannot be a bad thing. Of course I still have much to learn but now at 52 I have a deck of years to shuffle.
Blessings, G
“It’s not at all hard to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias.”
― Criss Jami
How do I shut myself off enough to hear you? How do I stop pushing to be near you? I am me so loudly at times, how do I tune it down so I can amplify your voice in my ears? How can I dry not judge your tears? How can I sit with you in pain without feeling the cause? or the because…when the only way i can hear the because is to listen not with my ears but with my heart, to feel your energy, as it is presented not as how I would have it be… I cannot use your pain to make my rhyme or waste my time I need to sit with you as I need to sit with myself. Perhaps something I need to learn how to do better as well.
Blessings, G
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.
Robert Pirsig
Life’s hitch hiker that was me
Thumbing through the moments that make memories
Watching her come out
and her mother be just fine
reminding me of another time
but… never mind.
I watched them fight
father and son
The boy decided he needed to run
I remembered…No.
She left school to discover life
working minimum pay under taxes’ knife
shacking up and breaking up
occasionally making up
before beginning again
the cycles to… well again
I walk through their stories
and hear them whisper
the private public shared moments
relived in other peoples’ lives
— GA Rosenberg
“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
I heard your pain
not a sob, not a scream
but a throbbing stomach clenching ball
It hurt yet I knew that to remove it
would be selfish
It would be to remove something from the
very heart of you
so I sat there
feeling it with you
Offering the solace
that you were not alone…
When I see someone hurting, the strongest temptation is to do something, anything that will take away their pain. In sympathy, it is so easy to say to someone “It’s alright and try to make it better somehow. That may work for pain that is merely physical but not so much when it comes to wounds of the heart or spirit. Some lessons can only be learned by going through it. It hurts to see someone hurting but can be a very selfish act to try to make them feel better without addressing what has caused the pain in the first place and what lesson they have attracted. Sometimes the best thing we can do instead is to let them know we are there hurting besides them…
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Forest Conquest by G A Rosenberg
Aerial View of a Spinning Peacock by G A Rosenberg
“Is it hard?’
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.”
― Robert M. Pirsig
Whenever I see, much less use, a phrase like ‘the right attitude’ or the right anything else for that matter, I find myself pausing. Right for who and in what situation. Surely what is right for me may not be right for someone else. Is there such a thing as objective right?
Well I have yet to find an answer where love and compassion were not the right attitude to have. Of course I’m using loaded terms here. By love I do not necessarily mean that new age soporific kind of love. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do to someone (for example someone who is about to harm others purposefully) maybe to injure them severely. Also when I say compassion, I definitely DO NOT mean sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel sorry for someone and want to give them what they want out of pity. Compassion involves awareness of who people are beyond what they show on the surface. When we feel compassion for someone, we tend to give them what they need, which is something quite different than what they want.
What other attitudes may be considered right? A key one for me is the realization that my answers are not complete and that there is always a new viewpoint to consider and integrate.
No matter how much I believe I know, any of it or all of it may be wrong. I’ve been wrong before and will be again and that’s ok as long as I don’t get so positional that I am unwilling to consider a new point of view. I love exposure to new ideas and viewpoints and when I come across one its like my birthday and christmas rolled into one.
I don’t have the arrogance to assume that love, compassion, an open mind and willingness to change are the right answers for everyone but they do tend to be the largest tools in my arsenal.
Blessings, G
“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick
There is a gift in being able to be there for others. Part of it may be an ego thing. It feels good to help. The trick sometimes is in knowing how to help. An alcoholic may appreciate money for booze when he has none but are you giving him what he needs or are you increasing his dependency? We give true help when what we do empowers another rather than makes them weaker. It seems so often that its easy to give a quick fix. Heck it takes less time than actually helping a person work through their problems. So often tho, we could help so much more by not opening our wallet but opening our hearts and our ears and learning what will truly benefit another. Perhaps it is a job offer, perhaps it is just a sounding board and sometimes it is knowing when not to help so that another can find their own way out.
I have helped in the wrong ways. I have learned that generosity with money all too often can foster dependency and resentment. I want to strengthen others with my help not weaken them. I hope to be strengthened by others in return.
Blessings, G
“Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.”
― Pema Chodron
Funny (or tragic depending how you look at it) the ways we find to justify our lives. Somehow in the last ten years or so, it became the in thing to validate our emotions, usually by attributing their cause to another person.
“I feel hurt because of what you said…or did…or were.”
“It’s my family, they never gave me credit or told me I was pretty and that’s why I always felt so worthless.”
We blame and blame and blame and what we do is get ourselves mired in the mud of our dysfunction.
Yeah I’m guilty of it too. Until one day it hit me that at a certain point in life (I arbitrarily picked 30 tho I believe that it can happen much earlier) you have to say. Yes these factors in my upbringing or my life or my relationship have created these buttons in me but now it is up to me to deal with them. If they remain now, its on me. Since then I have steadily (with periods of slagging off) been working on learning myself and deciding what I want to manifest. Is it easier than it sounds? Not particularly tho it seems that I have lots more energy now that I’ve stopped finding people to blame.
Not only that but once we take on the responsibility of who we are, the easier it becomes to feel compassion towards those in our past. It is an indescribable feeling when you can feel the heart of someone whom you once saw only as a villain, to understand that they were playing out their own scripts and acting from their own pain.
Blessings, G
Drifting Awareness by G A Rosenberg 
