In one of the too many piles of scribbles, scratches, and musings, and ‘don’t forget how this made you feel’ piles, I found this note I had written.
These days compassion is not something that I hold in high regard, if I am being honest I feel taken advantage of by people who are in a place to receive it. I am not sure where this feeling comes from but I am aware that it comes from a place of fear.
What are you stocking up on? Is there a feeling that you greedily keep, whenever you can, all of what you can? For me it’s typically joy, I can glow for hours of something as ridiculous as these little birds I always hear on my walks but do not see, seriously, I can hear so many of them, happily chirping in this God-forsaken city, so happy and yet I see nothing. Yea, that shit sets my soul on fire. Compassion for the person blocking the sidewalk and screaming bloody murder at 6 AM, scarring my already messed up dog even more so, and waking up the entire neighborhood on a Sunday? Yea, not so much. Oxford Languages defines compassion as sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.” the victims should be treated with compassion”.
Now, how about that last part. I don’t like the word victim, to me, it implies that someone has no control and as a complete control freak I have fooled myself into pompously assuming that we have control over what we become. On the tails of that, do I allow myself to pity myself? I honestly don’t know, the older I get the more I see that while I had a nice childhood and loving parents they were not perfect, they were human and my mother’s unwillingness to give me any positive or negative feedback affects me as an adult in many areas; she did not hug me or kiss me, I don’t recall her saying I love you to me until I was in my mid 20’s…… *here we go again, no pity for my mother who came from a horribly abusive household where she was most definitely NOT taught how to love, so how can I expect her to know how to show me*. What is wrong with feeling pity for someone who acts a certain way or is in a certain circumstance. See above? I wrote about my mother’s lack of showing love, just writing that made me feel like I was having a pity party. But what is wrong with self-compassion, let alone having compassion for another human or animal, if you have adopted you know all about having compassion for an animal. Stocking up on compassion, for me, could mean not being angry at the guy yelling but simply walking another direction and hoping he finds help (if I even knew where he came from I could call them to let them know he seems to be struggling), the woman in my building who seems to not understand that she has to get out of the way when someone needs to get off the elevator (perhaps she has such bad anxiety she just cannot move when she sees someone in that basement elevator area?), people not picking up after their dogs?! Ummm…they forgot a bag and will pick it up later?? UGH I can’t even type that lol, nope, no compassion for those gross jerks but I will stock up, I will try, I really will because I know people that have compassion for my silly ass, otherwise they would not still be my friends <3
-B
