Reunion in Sweden. Reconnection lets the good times roll again.(*)
There’s no yin without a yang. Or to put it another way, everything comes with a price. Compassion is no different. As this is a ‘times of yore’ post, I’ll begin with the biographical underpinnings of this observation.
I was traveling through West Africa with my future (now previous) wife to be when I came down with hepatitis. That knocked the wind out of my sails enough to return to California to see my folks. Within the year I had recovered and she had returned to her home in Sweden.
Out of that breakup arose a desire (a cry really) for deeper compassion. I truly felt I lacked compassion. Realistically however, I was no different that other folks my age. So why the sudden yearning for compassion?
One key source of human happiness is the sense of being connected: to the group; to the tribe; to another; to something beyond self, and my breakup disconnected me big time. Compassion is essentially the experience of being connected. My cry for compassion was a cry for connection.
As the years passed, I found the compassion I sought; my sense of connection deepened. Back when I desire it, I had no idea it would be as painful as it is. Feeling compassion means being connected to both the joys and the sorrows of life, and frankly life entails more sorrow than joy (from a correlation’s point of view anyway). Even so, I’d not give up the compassion to escape the sorrow. Why? As I said, the more compassion we feel, the more connected to all (and I do mean all) we feel. That outweighs the pain and sorrow. The benefit is worth the cost, for me anyway.
(*) Circumstances changed and my cry for compassion fell silent. As it turned out, she took me back, we married and spent eight years ‘working on the marrage’ (i.e., helping each other grow up). By the time we finally split up, I could felt enough overall compassion/connection to see me through. Fortunately, compassion continues to deepen over time, and naturally so: Circumstances bring us to maturity; maturity plays a key role in how broadly connected (impartial) and compassionate we can actually feel.
