Compassion – Day 1

I met one of my friends at an odd time in my life. I had just moved to California from Minnesota. I was in the early years of my grief after the death of my son, Shane. My daughter, Nichole, had turned eighteen. She was moving to New York. I had a lot of change going on. I knew who I had been and what my life was like. But I didn’t know what it was going to become.

My friend was in a transition period in his life too. He’d mention bits and pieces of the changes he had gone through. A marriage that hadn’t worked out. Getting stuck alone in what he thought was going to be the home of his dreams. He was uncertain of where he fit and where he belonged.

We had a lot of good times together during those transition years, just hanging out with each other and our other friends. We sensed all these things about each other—that the other person was going through grief, loss, change, and had a lot of uncertainty going on. But it wasn’t until years later that we really understood. We were having lunch together. By then he had remarried and had his first child. I had adjusted to Shane being gone and to Nichole being married and having children of her own. We were both on more solid ground.

“I never really understood how much pain you were in then,” he said. “I’d watch you go about your life. I’d hear you talk about parts of what you’d been through, but I didn’t understand the way I do now.”

“Ditto,” I said. “When you talked about your divorce and the things going on in your life, I understood intellectually that you had been through a lot of trauma and change. But I didn’t understand—not really—what a hard time that was in your life.”

Sometimes when we meet other people—and even after we’ve gotten to know them—all we see is the tip of the iceberg when we look at their lives. We don’t understand the things that are driving them, the unresolved issues from their pasts, and the depth of pain they’re in now.

We don’t want to have so much compassion that we enable others to hurt themselves or trod down the wrong path. And we don’t want to overunderstand, which is understanding the other person so much that we don’t take care of or understand ourselves.

But it doesn’t hurt to look a little deeper after a first glance.

Value: Having healthy compassion for other people and ourselves is the value this week.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact