I think my give a d$%#’s busted! I get mad just trying to write about this topic. I already erased three paragraphs because I was off on a rant against parents who pamper their children and protect them from responsibility—and even from normal disappointment of not getting everything they want! I was going to compare enabling and caretaking and pampering spoiled weak people with true compassion, but I got WAY off subject.
The voice that’s yelling from the back of my head is saying that lots of people don’t know what compassion is, at least not true compassion, so it gets displaced by all these counterfeits.
Worrying about a teenage young man (nearly adult) getting his feelings hurt because he hears people talking about being frustrated that he and his teammates didn’t put out much effort in a tournament—that’s not compassion. That’s pampering. When parents pay thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of their time to give their sons the opportunity to play a sport at a highly competitive level, it’s right to expect them to perform. It’s necessary. The message otherwise is destructive—we’ll put out the effort, we’ll pay a lot, we’ll prioritize our time, but you aren’t expected to commit or stick with it if it feels too hard.
Complaining to a concession stand worker that your young child doesn’t like hot dogs or popcorn, so why don’t they have chicken nuggets or something your child will eat, is not compassionate. It’s ridiculous. It says the whole world—even the junk food world of concession stands—has to change to accommodate your child’s mercurial tastes.
The father who picked up his two-year-old son and put him on his shoulders and then encouraged his six-year-old son to join him racing his four-year-old daughter to the car—he was not compassionate. In fact, when he taunted the little girl because he (a grown adult man in case I didn’t make that clear) and the older boy won, she started crying. The moron’s response? He talked to her and the older boy the way middle school boys tease each other during competitions. She was devastated.
Maybe I should automatically feel compassion for the moron. Maybe I should see how broken he must be to need to beat his own four-year-old daughter at a race and then TAUNT her to get the sense that his equipment really is male.
Maybe I should feel compassion for the mother who is overwrought that her nearly adult son will feel the weight of other people’s expectations. Maybe I should see that she’s probably pampering and babying him because harsh expectations caused her a lot of pain. It’s not for certain, but it’s likely, and it’s certainly more compassionate than what I start out thinking.
Maybe I should feel how burdensome it is to be the mother of a preschooler who won’t eat hot dogs, won’t eat popcorn, won’t eat who-knows-what-else, but still feels desperate to rush around and find some specific junk food to feed the not-starving child.
Nah. That would be like feeling sorry for the man who had to clean his own house because he got his knickers in a knot and fired the cleaning service while his wife was away visiting family.
Compassion is concern about the welfare of others and includes empathy, the ability to have other people’s feelings resonate in your own heart. It is expressed not in caretaking, but in helping others learn to take care of themselves. It is doing for them only what they cannot do for themselves while expecting them to do what they can do and to learn what they don’t yet know. Burdens are lightened and lifted when shared, but joy shared becomes joy overflowing.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Humility
It’s taken me a long time to get this post written. First, it’s a stretch for someone like me to talk about humility. Second, I like to use a story as an example of the need for these qualities of character. In this case, I have way too many examples of my shortcomings!
When the road is open in front of me and a car waits until I get close before pulling out right in front of me, going about half the speed limit, I don’t see a valuable human being. I see a moron!
When I sit on a committee meeting—any committee, any topic—and the discussion collapses to the details of decorations or which font to put on a report or letter, my connectedness to humankind vanishes.
When I hear intense political arguments that turn into name-calling matches—where one side says any woman who wants to abort her baby is evil, and the other side says anyone who would stop a woman from her right to control her own body is evil—I don’t WANT to be connected to such hateful people.
When I go to the newly constructed “downtown” part of our formerly rural town which is trying to grow into an exclusive suburban community, and see people on cell phones hardly slowing at stop signs and not even looking as they roll right through, oblivious to the people around them slamming on breaks and jumping out of the way… well, I think you get the picture. Self-absorbed arrogance and false superiority really chap my #&$ (hide). I mean, for someone to think he (or usually she in our upscale little suburb) is superior to others because of the town she lives in is childish nonsense. To think she is better than all the other people who LIVE IN THAT SAME SNOBBY SUBURB is outrageous! They ALL drive cars that cost more than my first house! I don’t have the capacity to see the common humanity of people who act like that when I’m living the experience. Even with time and distance it’s hard to find compassion and empathy for such a person.
My grandmother was fond of saying, “People are just no damned good.” I thought for a long time that she was very jaded and very negative in her outlook. As I got older, I even thought maybe it was just her way of expressing the Presbyterian theological position of the total depravity of man—corruption is complete and taints every corner of the flesh and soul. In spite of her criticisms of other people and her sharp-witted quips to her family, she was very loving and caring. I finally realized that people probably disappointed her a lot. But in order to be disappointed so often, she had to have some level of belief in the ability of people to do good and some hope that she would see it. Maybe she was an optimist after all! I want to see the valuable person hidden inside a lot of people, but sometimes it’s just too hard.
Number 1 on Kent Keith’s “Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership” is:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered; love them anyway.
I guess that especially applies to those annoying, egotistical, colonialist, snobby #($@&#&%@s!
Humility is an acceptance that I am human, like all other people, with flaws and shortcoming. It is rooted in the belief in the dignity, or inherent worth, of all human beings. For me this derives from my belief that mankind is created in the Imago Dei, the image of God. Humility is the path to compassion and accepting the shortcomings of others. It also allows me to see that the poor have as much dignity as the wealthy, that the frail have as much dignity as the strong, and that the vulnerable have as much dignity as the powerful. Humility reminds me that the person cleaning the restroom is as worthy as the person who can change my life by approving my contract.
When the road is open in front of me and a car waits until I get close before pulling out right in front of me, going about half the speed limit, I don’t see a valuable human being. I see a moron!
When I sit on a committee meeting—any committee, any topic—and the discussion collapses to the details of decorations or which font to put on a report or letter, my connectedness to humankind vanishes.
When I hear intense political arguments that turn into name-calling matches—where one side says any woman who wants to abort her baby is evil, and the other side says anyone who would stop a woman from her right to control her own body is evil—I don’t WANT to be connected to such hateful people.
When I go to the newly constructed “downtown” part of our formerly rural town which is trying to grow into an exclusive suburban community, and see people on cell phones hardly slowing at stop signs and not even looking as they roll right through, oblivious to the people around them slamming on breaks and jumping out of the way… well, I think you get the picture. Self-absorbed arrogance and false superiority really chap my #&$ (hide). I mean, for someone to think he (or usually she in our upscale little suburb) is superior to others because of the town she lives in is childish nonsense. To think she is better than all the other people who LIVE IN THAT SAME SNOBBY SUBURB is outrageous! They ALL drive cars that cost more than my first house! I don’t have the capacity to see the common humanity of people who act like that when I’m living the experience. Even with time and distance it’s hard to find compassion and empathy for such a person.
My grandmother was fond of saying, “People are just no damned good.” I thought for a long time that she was very jaded and very negative in her outlook. As I got older, I even thought maybe it was just her way of expressing the Presbyterian theological position of the total depravity of man—corruption is complete and taints every corner of the flesh and soul. In spite of her criticisms of other people and her sharp-witted quips to her family, she was very loving and caring. I finally realized that people probably disappointed her a lot. But in order to be disappointed so often, she had to have some level of belief in the ability of people to do good and some hope that she would see it. Maybe she was an optimist after all! I want to see the valuable person hidden inside a lot of people, but sometimes it’s just too hard.
Number 1 on Kent Keith’s “Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership” is:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered; love them anyway.
I guess that especially applies to those annoying, egotistical, colonialist, snobby #($@&#&%@s!
Humility is an acceptance that I am human, like all other people, with flaws and shortcoming. It is rooted in the belief in the dignity, or inherent worth, of all human beings. For me this derives from my belief that mankind is created in the Imago Dei, the image of God. Humility is the path to compassion and accepting the shortcomings of others. It also allows me to see that the poor have as much dignity as the wealthy, that the frail have as much dignity as the strong, and that the vulnerable have as much dignity as the powerful. Humility reminds me that the person cleaning the restroom is as worthy as the person who can change my life by approving my contract.
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