Turn to Him the Other Also

I have been thinking a lot about Compassion and how important a virtue it is. As a Christian, I try to live my life in a way that Jesus would. As least...that's what I try to do whenever I remember . Whether or not you believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, I don't think anyone can dispute that he lived a remarkably compassionate life for a man. How selfish I can be! How self-absorbed! It's not that I go around pruposefully hurting people. But I sometimes put on blinders. I think, "It's not my problem," or that my point of view is the most valid.

Wrong. A thousand times, wrong.

Even if my point of view is more valid, I'm pretty sure the great work of this life is not to prove how right one is all the time.

There are probably lots of things that qualify as the "the great work" of our lives. But, Christian or agnostic or whatever it is you believe, achieving basic human kindness is a worthy goal. And not just kindness, compassion.

I'm discovering that compassion requires me to swallow a lot of pride. And I have a lot of pride to swallow, as evidenced (among other things) by my last post. I have a horrible tendency to assume the worst. For example, sometimes I feel unfairly judged when no judgment is being passed. When Paul talks about charity thinking no evil, he's talking to suspicious, defensive, vulnerable-feeling people like me, who tend to take life with waaaay too many grains of salt.

Compassion, on the other hand, tells me to swallow my injury--real or imagined--and see a situation through someone else's eyes. To not project my disapproval of someone's momentary rudeness onto their entire character. To not take an honest mistake personally, or carry insults away with me. Compassion tells me to defenestrate this whole notion of entitlement and "what's in it for me." (Defenestrate: the best new word you've learned all day)

Compassion says, "Wait a minute. That person is not out to get you. Stop, and try to understand before you react."

Why am I posting this? Because I'm thinking about it. Because I had an instance or two just in the past week that could have gone from ugly to worse, but didn't. Because...I don't know why. Because through the haze of my rage, or terrible impatience or what have you, I reached really deep down into myself and from somewhere (I don't know where)I found compassion. It was really, really hard, but somehow, I did it, and it turned my whole day around. It was totally empowering.

I felt like an adult... no, that's a bad way to put it because there are a lot of really. dumb. adults.

I felt whole.