Q. Why Is Compassion so Damn Hard for the Witty and Charming?
A. Because you are afraid it will make you into a fanatic.
Fact is you are already fanatically avoiding feeling compassion, every time you unthinkingly give the less fortunate people (there are ALWAYS less fortunate) a hand-out just to get them away from you, rather than because you think someday you might end up that way. Or every time you unthinkingly blame the more fortunate people for not helping you more often (my family's speciality). Or else you are fanatically avoiding all people so that nobody can ever criticize you or make you feel uncompassionate, which makes you feel bad. But think-- fanatically avoiding ever feeling bad means that you never know when you really feel GOOD.
I know, I know, it's not an exact science, but here are my inane equations anyway. There has to be a way to explain why people, seeing me dealing with grief over my dying girlfriend's suicide, are actually repulsed and even TELL me that they have a hard time feeling compassion for me. So here's my wild ride down the slippery slope of character equations.
YOUR AVERAGE PEOPLE PERSON + inner child (id) or inner optimist (desiring anything and acknowledging it takes optimism)= someone who will seek faith, a faith, something to direct their choices, a code of right and wrong, so that people will like her/him. This person seeks ways to ingratiate her or himself through wit (not just knowledge, but discernment, knowing what's funny when). This person is a natural flirt, even if they couldn't hold up their end of a conversation with a saw horse.
NON-PEOPLE PERSON + inner child = my sister, never quite getting a joke, never quite understanding why the choices of words she makes sometimes infuriate people, someone basically not open to leading an examined life because she gets it "wrong" so often. She knows how to want, and how to seek faith, but she condemns herself so often without seeking remedy, that she generally avoids people and got herself a heinous husband who people generally avoid. He thinks he's infallible, he criticizes her to the point where she categorically dismisses all his criticism, and then she lashes out at people to make herself feel superior because she doesn't really know what she's worth anymore.
OK. I had to open up a shelf in the hierarchy where I could leave my sister. What do you do with someone you don't trust to make good choices who specifically doesn't have compassion for anyone, even herself? What do you do with a drunken sailor? I'm just going to say call this a NON-PEOPLE PERSON and leave them to their slurred little Song of Theirself.
Moving on, let's say you are a PEOPLE PERSON SEEKING WIT (the highest expression of ego: discernment) but you have forgotten your optimistic side. You are rootless. You can't remember why you got up this morning, or came out of the womb in the first place. You are reading T.S. Elliot "The Wasteland" with your breakfast every morning and you can't quite grasp why HE got up every morning. Nobody reads poetry anyway. Nobody cares. You don't even care. Why try?
This is the state of mind that I think most people are in. From this state it is impossible to overcome your need for a right/ wrong answer, extend yourself beyond the few things you believe to be true, and be compassionate to a stranger who looks as though they've made at least a few choices that you would not have made.
I'll characterize this as: PEOPLE-PERSON - inner child + wit = your average twit. Myself on a bad day. The egoist with her latte and a bus pass but no way to see that the soulless bus driver is not actually TRYING to spill her drink, because it's technically illegal to drink on the bus. This person is prone to feeling permanently wrong, permanently punished, and that everyone's expectations are Too Damn High.
Then there is the PEOPLE-PERSON + inner child + wit = someone seeking routes to transcendence, new expansive ways of thinking, access to compassion. This person understands the role of the responsible citizen, the inner-parent / super-ego. They believe in parking laws, even if they sometimes break them. Then, they pay the ticket and don't act like that 28 dollars makes them Broken Down By The Man. They accept that they are tools, or better yet, cogs in the machine, and they aspire to understanding what this machine might be up to, and since they are bringing their inner child along for the ride, this machine might just be up to something Good.
Then there are the NON-PEOPLE-PEOPLE + inner child + wit, which equals the reclusive artists like Edward Gorey. And the NON-PEOPLE-PEOPLE - inner child + wit, which equals Andrew Dice Clay, back in the day.
And this brings us to the Compassionate Person.
PEOPLE-PERSON + inner child - wit + compassion= someone who follows blindly, like your average local 19 year old Mormon "Elder." Or someone at Jonestown. Someone who can't sit down and make a cost benefit analysis about a moral choice to save his life. These folks serve in the interest of whatever piques their interest that day, giving them good, optimistic feelings, like a child in a room of phones and a telepromter telling them what to say when they make those fundraising calls and a fearless leader there to offer them a glass of kool aid as a reward for their excellent work.
PEOPLE-PERSON - inner child + wit + compassion= I think a lot of existentialist liberals end up here. They understand service to a Greater Good. They understand a set of rights and wrongs. They just can't see the Why Try of things. They read the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet and end up like Eeyore. They become graduate students and eventually become lawyers and eventually end up becoming the life of the wine and cheese party only quoting book and movie reviews and never books or movies. Snore. I think this is the place I am most in danger of ending up.
PEOPLE PERSON - inner child - wit + compassion = a Methodist minister. My grandma, for example (who is a Methodist minister). She can't tell a joke. She takes herself incredibly seriously. She is almost militaristically "at service" to any and all. She doesn't visit, she steam rolls various parts of the family on a seasonal basis. Sigh. Two weeks until her 84th birthday. I have a completely wholesome low-fat anti-war pity-drenched dinner to look forward to this Thanksgiving. Not that I need fat, or war, or dry wit to keep me going. OK fat and wit, but not war. All I'm saying is that it is hard to have prolonged conversation with this person.
NON-PEOPLE-PERSON +/- inner child +/- wit + compassion= the non-people person's compassion is only theoretical: they don't actually leave their safety zones to test it, so I'm not going to count it. Let's just call this person My Sister That One Time She Nailed a Non-Abusive Joke And Had Intended to Do So To Show Someone Who Was Having a Hard Time that She Understood. A rare bird indeed.
So what's my bottom line here? To keep from getting stuck in a rut in life you might work harder to be aware of all these three-- optimism, discernment, and compassion. To realize when these three things come and go takes practice and discipline. And practice doesn't make perfect, it just makes less imperfect. And more daily practice.
1. Hold and enjoy the moment in your mind when you know you're feeling optimistic.
Me, trotting out to get a Gingerbread Latte without even thinking that they might screw up and burn the espresso.
2. Sit back and enjoy watching yourself make a decision. Take advantage of your ability to make good choices.
Hm, I want to save money, so I'll get a small Gingerbread Latte and use the rest of the money for bus fare. And I won't offer to buy the Gingerbread Latte of my friend in line behind me.
3. And then be kind to yourself and others in a conscious way, if only in your inside voice and not your outside voice.
That bus driver didn't mean to spill my latte on me, I think I won't imagine Buffy jumping out of a seat and killing him. Stab stab stab stab stab stab stab.
Well, I said it was a practice.
