Locating compassion
Even when it feels impossible
When I was like 23, someone broke up with me via text. I was so annoyed and told my mom.
“Can you believe this?”
My mom said, “Oh yeah, of course. I understand exactly why he did that.”
What the fuck? Really, mom?
She has always been this way. Anytime I brought her my experience of injustice, she always played devil’s advocate. It drove me fucking insane, and it programmed me to try to understand others even when I didn’t want to.
It was not an excellent way to live because I was constantly foregoing my own experiences of pain to hold others’.
This tendency also spilled over into my marriage. I would always put in the emotional labor of making sure Dan was feeling alright before I tended to my own emotions. It built up over time and put a strain on our marriage in ways that took a lot of ruptures and repair before we finally began building the skill of mutually witnessing each other in our pain.
While there is a part of me that wishes my mom had shown me a little more compassion first and foremost, there is no part of me that would have had it any other way. Here’s why.
First, because I forced myself to understand things that I didn’t want to understand, I became more fluent in other people’s languages. I began picking up the ways they wanted to be seen, and the question simply was whether I wanted to see them in that way. It became easier to relate to other people because I was used to having capacity that I did not want to have.
Second, because I built capacity for things about other people that I didn’t like, I was able to build capacity for things about me that I didn’t like. That meant that it became easier to be okay with all the parts of me that I was supposed to “fix.” An example would be speaking up for things imperfectly, like white supremacy and polyamory and decolonization and internalized biases. Even when there was a lot of judgment and broken relationships, I was able to hold the shamed parts of me because I had already done that for other people.
And here’s what I realized after being forced to have compassion: compassion is not something that can be forced.
Hold on, what?
When my mom was trying to be compassionate towards others and playing devil’s advocate, it arose out of her sincere humanity and belief that there is always a way for different people to coexist.
She believed that it is possible for someone to go first in understanding and relating to the other person in order for them to coexist.
For her, there was no conceivable way that we have all been brought to this world just to antagonize and hurt each other.
I think this inherent desire to relate to the other person is in all of us.
When we see someone in pain, especially when it’s someone whose experiences we can relate to at the human level, we will often find ourselves with a bleeding heart. It is not something that we can really help. It is hard to force sincere tears.
And when you don’t find yourself feeling that compassion, I would argue that there is something else that you are experiencing that requires more attention and compassion at the moment.
Like if you are running down the street wailing for help with your broken arm, you’re not going to have capacity to pay attention to someone who is hurting from a paper cut.
We each are wired to pay attention to someone’s hurt, including our own, because we are wired to rely on not just our personal survival but also our collective survival.
Just because you are feeling angry at someone else even in their pain does not mean that you are devoid of compassion. In fact, your anger is likely an indicator that there is a part of you that is hurting so much that requires that compassion first before you ever require yourself to show that same level of compassion to anyone else.
This is important to know because we often shame ourselves for the anger, and we end up becoming so busy with the shame that we forget to locate the compassion dying to come out of us and be expressed.
This is because often times, shame is louder than compassion.
Which is understandable because we often tie shame more directly to our sense of survival. We often feed into the illusion that shame points us to something that needs to be fixed so that we can survive and belong to the community. This is simply a product of our industrialized culture where we have been conditioned to believe that fixing things and solving problems is how we find value in ourselves.
This just does not have to be true.
I want to direct us to how nature actually works. When you look at the Grand Canyon and its magnificence, the trees turning red in the fall, the unlimited expanse of the universe, those things have never been told to be fixed.
The only thing we do when it comes to the natural order of things is honor it.
Human beings are part of that natural order. The most important task we have before us is to honor who we are, where we are, and what we come with.
I fundamentally believe that we have this knowing in all of us. We each have the strong knowing that all the ways we’ve been taught to hate ourselves and each other have been learned. We were never born with this kind of hate.
But the hate grows when our differences have threatened our survival, our paradigms, and our resources.
I, too, have a lot of hate in my heart for all the ways I have not been seen or heard. Especially when I notice myself screaming into the void so that at least someone can hear me.
But here is what I have come to realize: the desire to be seen and heard can always be met. The question is, where can I get that resource, and what do I need to do to get that resource?
And here’s the answer: Find someone to honor, honor them, and be honored in return.
Sometimes, we won’t be honored the way we want to be honored. That is when we can either communicate our desire to be honored in a particular way or find someone else who can more easily honor us the way we want to be honored.
It takes work.
The place I often find people going to is trying to get that resource from someone that is just unavailable to offer that resource to us. Like, you cannot get an orange from an apple tree no matter how hard you try.
I am guilty of this. And the reason I am guilty of this is that I have been taught to believe that certain trees are forbidden or that I need to stick with one tree or that looking for more trees is selfish.
What if there were no rules or regulations on how we get the resource that we want?
When there are no rules on whom I can honor and how I can honor them, here is what I do:
I find someone who finds me shameful and disgusting, hear them out, honor them, show them compassion because I resonate with what they are saying at the human level.
I find someone outside of my marriage who is able to honor me in ways that is new and exciting, which is not available in my 7.5 year old marriage.
I text a friend telling them how much I love them even if it means that I might be bothering them or that I’m cheesy or that I might not get the response I want.
I am able to find someone to honor more easily when I honor my own desires.
Our inherent ability to be compassionate toward others was never a question. The question has always been: what is blackening out our capacity to love because shame has been yelling at us about a right and wrong way to love?
Our road back to our humanity begins with seeing that there is no right or wrong way to be human. Just like there is no right or wrong way to be a flower shivering in the wind.
It simply is.
Our compassion simply is.
Here are some questions to consider when you are attempting to locate your own sense of compassion:
How am I already compassionate? Who am I loving effortlessly?
Where am I making myself wrong for showing my compassion? Am I making it wrong that I am showing myself compassion first and foremost?
What is my heart desiring so deeply that I haven’t received yet? If I were ready to receive this, where would I go search for it?
If there was no right or wrong way to be loved, how would I want to be loved?
If there was no right or wrong way to trust my own sense of compassion, how would I show compassion today?
We will feel messy. We will feel behind. Especially because we have been conditioned to believe that there is a wrong way to do things.
Does compassion even feel like something you want to engage with today? If not, maybe it’s just not something that will be part of today.
This is important because that is how you are honoring yourself.
Ironically, that is how you are showing yourself compassion.
Whatever your truth is, that is most important.
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You can find more of me here: angela-han.com.