The importance of compassion

candistyx

I often read about how it's important to "love yourself" and if I am honest every single time I cringe and think of some loud woman, probably wearing leopard print, cackling that she loooves herself. Or I think of some narcissistic dude saying how he has everything he wants because he visualised it and the only reason you don't have a big house and a swanky car is because you don't love yourself enough to want it.

There's another saying that often goes with the exhortation to love yourself: "you can't love someone else until you love yourself".

I want to turn that on it's head. You can't love yourself until you love others. What it comes down to is compassion.

When I was younger, I discovered that making mean comments about other people got lots of laughs. I liked it when I made people laugh, so I made more mean comments about people. Eventually it got so that I started actually believing the mean stuff I was saying about people and I became very cynical and misanthropic - all because I wanted to get a few laughs. Thing is, it wasn't just other people, every mean thing I ever said about someone could at some point apply to me. Every cutting remark, every scathing retort - I could think of a better one against myself. I hated other people, but as I was all too human I was forced to also hate myself.

I didn't turn it around by finally learning to love myself, by realising that I am "worth" caring about. I turned it around by cutting other people some slack. Instead of thinking about what was wrong with them, I started thinking about all their good qualities. When I caught people saying mean things about other people, or even me laughing at mean things about other people, or even worse me saying the mean things myself, I took note and made sure to add a "but seriously, so and so is a great person, really good with their kids, they work hard, we should cut them some slack" or whatever.

And then as I started giving people the benefit of the doubt, started loving them despite all their human weaknesses, I started to catch on that hey, my human weaknesses are no different to theirs. I cut myself some slack. I realised, hey, just like them, I too have good qualities mixed in with the bad. I too am worth the effort - and the pain, of love.

I was walking in the park yesterday, and they've got these wild flowers planted everywhere, it's some "urban medows" thing and it's really nice. So I am walking through the park looking at these beautiful flowers, and it's putting me in that kind of pensive mood and I am thinking about what it means to love someone. And I think to myself love is the feeling where you want to be able to trust someone, you want to be able to give them the benefit of the doubt and invest in them, to be good to them - you might not trust them, but you really want to. And if you want to it's easy to be good to them, even though you might get hurt for doing it, it's still easy because that's what love is. And hate is the opposite, you're looking for reasons to think badly of them, for excuses to treat them cruelly, because they did this or that wrong.

With enough betrayals, love easily turns into hate because you don't want to be hurt any more. But that's where compassion comes in, because we are all weak and everyone has done wrong - and once we learn to love each other anyway, we can finally admit that we're human, and stop punishing ourselves and everyone around us for being human.

lessismoreohio

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

Dalai Lama