Balancing between compassion and dispassion

Is a lack of compassion apathy? Yet is a lack of distance meddling?

In my last post I wrote about allowing people to find their own path. I spoke of allowing people to recognize and endure through their own obstacles. I acknowledged my need to accept the challenges others face as potentially having value for them, as being a source from which they may grow through their own private experiences.

The true source of my complaint

I have a complaint. Along with everyone else.

Lately I have been noticing a lot of complaining. Complaining about what laws may or may not be passed. Complaints about the price of gas and the avarice of the oil companies. Complaints about sitting in traffic. Complaints about ones health. Complaints about the unending rain. Complaints about the attitudes and behaviors of other people.

Protecting ourselves from whom?

Just as with many others, the violence in Arizona stays with me.

As impactive as this event has been on our psyche, it is difficult to file it away as another footnote in the pages of recent history of our country and our society. The event has transpired, but it has not passed.

Embracing an opposing perspective

I’m starting to forget how to rally against things.

I was once the self-proclaimed king of rants. I had the ability to go off on a rant and dress up my disdain like a chief in a Mardi Gras parade. But I may be losing the gift of rant, reduced only to observations that hold an evaporating cynicism, bereft of the flamboyant excitable vocabulary that once accompanied these expressions of my viewpoints.

Finding the culpability in the recent tragedy

Am I responsible for the recent shootings in Arizona?

This might seem like a question that is way out there, but I need to ask. As one of countless people who have a great desire to see more love and light shine in the hearts of the people that share the world with us, I have to ask myself this question so I can figure out what I can do to change the world.

The first great challenge here is knowing I have no control over the actions or choices of any other living creature on this planet. I cannot change anyone’s mind nor can I make anyone take any action or force a person to adopt any ideal. Nor would it be prudent for me to do so, as that would imply that my ideas, thoughts, and values are right over all others, which could not be further from the truth.

So I have to ask myself if this action that was taken, this choice that was made by the individual that pulled the trigger does not fit into the vision of the world I wish to live in, how am I contributing to the creation of the world I currently live in? What choices and actions am I taking that help to create a world where this kind of choice can be possible?

After all, I can’t control or change anyone but myself, right? So what do I need to change in myself to possibly influence this world, in hopes of living in a world with less atrocity?

In a world where violence is considered abhorrent, do I choose entertainment in movies and television that strip violence down to a component of fantasy, where we can excuse it because “it’s not real”?

If someone embraces values that are in complete contrast with mine, do I condemn them as misguided, unintelligent, or just plain wrong?

Do I laugh at another’s expense or speak critically of another person, whether or not they are present?

Do I state that I “could’ve killed so-and-so” for doing something that upset me, but it’s acceptable as “just a figure of speech” in light of the fact that I could never actually follow through with such an act?

Do I hold the conviction that the world would be a much better place if everyone’s values were in alignment with mine and that any and all opposing values simply “went away”?

The act committed by the individual that fired the gun were acts born of the same genetic material we all share, a seed shaped through the aggregated social DNA or our environment and planted in our collective consciousness. This seed could in no way germinate if the ground it was planted in was not fertile. This was an act of violence in an attempt to put an end to the actions based on the opposing values of the gunman. We fertilize the soil with each acceptance of violence in make-believe form we consume through our choice in entertainment. We give the ground rich nutrients for such an act when we create a chasm between ourselves and those whose values are in contrast to our own, leaving little room for acceptance.

For we ourselves may not have pulled the trigger, we may not have broken the levy that holds back acts of violence, but with each tiny decision that bears even the slightest resemblance to this exaggerated expression of hatred, we add to the tumult, as every flood is comprised of each drop of rain that makes up the deluge that raises the river that bursts the dam. Each move we make, each act we take, lets the world know that that path is okay to follow, no matter how safe or hazardous the path may be. We cannot claim to not endorse violence and hatred if we conduct ourselves in ways that express the seemingly “harmless” versions of these expressions.

So I may not have pulled the trigger, but any trace of intolerance I exhibit paints a dotted line to the atrocities that appear in our society. For the fire of hatred that burns through our way of life cannot survive without being provided ample air to sustain it, oxygenated by our choices that contribute to the atmosphere. Our seemingly innocent endorsements by way of  polarizing perspectives contribute another molecule for the ember to taste, to explode into the flames of moral chaos. I cannot point a finger without three pointing right back at me.

I’m left with a simple choice: to love without exception or to accept the pathology of self-loathing that gives birth to such incidents as the one that has recently joined our way of living. The choice seems simple, but most of the time it is not. But it does get easier when we see the distorted reflection of ourselves in those unfortunate events, not in an act to avoid what we ourselves may become, but to undo what we might already be.

Self esteem in subculture

Very early in our lives we are told, “just be yourself”.

As we walk into the world of pre-school and kindergarten we are given training wheels for developing a solid self-esteem so we don’t tip over under the weight of judgment and criticism. We are taught to be proud of who we are through the rhetoric of musical self-affirmations. We are told how special we are, each and every one of us. We’re special… just like everyone else.

We then migrate into the age of learning mathematics and history. Along with those lessons come the expectations on how much we need to learn, on how well we demonstrate the knowledge imparted to us, on our capacity to be the memory savant during the next 45 minutes of test taking. We are still told the value of being unique and special and being proud of who we are, but on the terms that are laid out before us.

We then reach that pivotal, critical, and oh so awkward tween, pre-teen, and teen age, where mob mentality is minimum expectation, where group think, conformity and social indoctrination are paramount to survival. The mere thought or possibility of ostracization from the social standards can lead to significant scarring of self worth. As the grade levels increase, thus the education and socialization expectations along with them, the greater the stakes, the further removed we become from heralding our uniqueness. The nursery rhymes that incite the dance of self esteem become faint echoes of a melody we barely recall, the words lost under a heap of an imperative to socially conform.

This is my own battle as I move parts of my own self-expression from box to closet to safe. If I haven’t seen my ideas or interests endorsed by the plot threads of prime time television, I dress it up in camouflage so as not to garner sideways glances and wrenched up left eyebrows. I do a bit of mental eeny-meeny-miney-mo as to whom I will divulge such ideas as spirit guides and tarot cards and my interest therein. I whisper these ideas to social organizations into which I tiptoe, forums that welcome us with cute nomenclatures written on our “Hello my name is” stickers, groups of friends that discuss these ideas in attics with other Anne Franks of the esoteric spirituality sect.

Then this is where I wake up. This is who I am. What is the price of rebuff? To be spurned by those that do not embrace my ideology? Is that to say it is important for me to be embraced by people who would not accept or understand me outright? Or simply to be embraced by people regardless? Along with my subcultural interests I bring compassion, kindness, humor, warmth, lightness, and honesty to the table. If all those wonderful and positive aspects of my character are dismissed offhand due to being nervous that I may cast a narcoleptic spell upon them that calls for an amphibian kiss as the antidote, then in all actuality I myself am being dismissive of my own character and all those positives therein.

So I therefore relieve all others of the responsibility of having to accept me for what I bring to the table. I let them off the hook, therefore I let myself off in turn.

Being glad to have made a mistake

I made a mistake recently. And I learned something interesting from it.

It’s not so much what I learned as far as course correction, or improvement on a process. It was what I learned about making mistakes.

I was working on a wood project but I had realized I no longer had a jig necessary for making dowel joints. It would have been optimal and yielded the best results to use dowels for the joints, but with haste and impatience looking over my shoulder, breathing down my neck and tugging at my shirt tails, I opted for the brad nailer for joining pieces.

Mind you, these pieces are less that 3/4″ wide on all four sides. Using a nailer without having the nail jut out the side of the piece was to take precise and accurate guesswork to get it straight. Needless to say, after close to a dozen jutted nails and gouged wood from their subsequent removal, I disgustedly walked away from my Frankenproject and opted to purchase the dowel jig and start from ground zero.

The minor lesson for me was not to rush through the project and not to be to hasty to start it. Another minor lesson was to not venture into the project until I have what I need to do it right.

The major lesson was to embrace the mistake.

I had taken a moment to reflect on my frustration with the project and all the mistakes I had made. In doing so I wanted to explore why I was frustrated, what was the reason for a mistake to be such an anathema. I wasn’t happy about having to start over. But how can a person waste time? I was on no deadline. This project could be completed at any time. I was annoyed at not being able to use the nailer accurately. Why was I upset about attaining a perfect result using a technique that was inherently prone to error? It bothered me that I was too impatient to start the project rather than wait for the right tools to be in my possession. Does that make me a scumbag? It makes me human.

So often we are overly critical of mistakes… our own mistakes, other’s mistakes. Many times if not most of the times it’s from having marinated our actions in expectations. Expecting that we should be infallible, or super-human. That our mistakes were due to a lack of consideration for ourselves or for others. But in the grand scheme of things it seems the reverse may be more accurate, that we lack consideration for ourselves and others when we don’t allow ourselves and others to make mistakes and have those mistakes.