What is Compassion?

From the Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition is “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” That sounds like someone spent many years in therapy to come up with that one!

Compassion comes out of personal pain and frustration. If you were one of the lucky ones who always got a date for the prom, how would you be able to understand the pain of never being asked? Well, for some folks it comes naturally. They “get it” without living that moment of pain or frustration. For others, they never “get it” and this is what I am writing about today.

Barbara Sher uses a term, “infant narcissist.” When we are born, we are all one of these. As a child, all our needs are taken care of, we are dependent on adults for our survival, but as we grow, we move past that. Our need for connection plays a part in caring and wanting to help others, meaning, it isn’t all about us. But when it is “all about us”, that mind set becomes the breeding ground for spoiled children or future Divas. We’ve all known or have met a person (someone like me) who just doesn’t understand that everyone else’s life doesn’t revolve around theirs, the narcissist. The narcissist lacks the compassion to understand that we all need understanding from one another.

In essence, we should be grateful for all the pain and frustration we’ve gone through in our lives. Because of it, it gives us a connection with our fellow creatures. Compassion equals connection, and without it, we can’t be the caring human beings that most of us strive to be.

A good friend of mine ended our long-term friendship because, according to her, I had changed too much from who I was when we first met. Of course, my coming out of the closet at the age of 49 didn’t help matters any! I wrote, “As you are aware, I didn’t always approve of some of your actions during your divorce crisis, but I comforted you during those times and I never walked away from you. It really hurt that you weren’t there for me or even tried to understand what I was going through.”

Until recently, I couldn’t put a finger on what it was that upset me so about this whole situation. And then it dawned on me. It was her lack of compassion for my life choices that created the unhappiness in our friendship. Prior to her decision to break off our friendship, I had spent too many hours talking to my therapist and friends about this situation. They all said “Break it off. If she can’t be there for you, especially when you’ve been there for her, why would you want to keep the friendship going?” I kept saying that it was our years of history together which was an important connection for me. And, I also blamed my coming out of the closet as the cause because it didn’t mesh with any of her personal and religious beliefs.

But what really caused the end, was the lack of any type of compassion from her. Her life has always been very structured with only black and white moments. Anything that doesn’t fit in that mode was rejected or thrown out. She had people around her that help her with her life. It had given her a sense of entitlement in which her world is the revolving force that keeps others in that same sphere. She never grew past that infant mentality that she is to be served instead of helping and being there for others.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, and I’ve hurt a lot of people in the process much to my regret. When I did, it was because I lacked the compassion to understand the harm I was causing them. As I progress in my journey to understand what kind of person I am, my one hope is that I become a more compassionate and understanding soul which will be hard to do when one is a Diva!

I can't believe I created my own blog...how awesome!

This is just amazing...much easier to create than figuring out how to load music on to my new iPod shuffle! I have always wanted to write and be published. Now that I have made that goal, let's see what I can do and if anyone is interested in what I have to say.