Remembering Compassion

Week number two, I am glad to say was a lot easier than last week.  I decided to give Julian Michaels a week off and pulled out my DDR mat and for those of you foreign to DDR it means Dance Dance Revolution.  The game is played with a square mat that has arrows going up and down as well as left to right, the point of the game is to hit the arrows on the mat (with your feet) that match up to the arrows on the screen.  It isn’t as easy as it sounds but it’s good cardio and the game can track the calories you burn as you play/workout. 

A personal goal for myself over the past few weeks has been learning to be more compassionate towards others.  We are very quick to take advantage of our perceptions and biases when we talk to and try to understand the people who surround us. We have a tendency to blame a person’s disposition for their behavior or condition rather than consider what that person has experienced or the person’s situation in life.    

“Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)- We humans are first of all being in a situation.  We cannot be distinguished from our situations, for they form us and decide our possibilities” 

Our situations in life govern a great deal of how we interact in our day-to-day lives as well as how we present ourselves to the people around us.  This is however a complicated way of thinking, since our preconceived judgments are made within a few seconds of  meeting or gawking form a far at someone.  Because of this though, I feel practicing compassion for others is a good place to begin in changing our initial conceptions of others but also our conceptions of ourselves. 

The concept of using compassion may seem like a “DUH” idea to some individuals however how many of us are guilty of viewing others harshly.  It is an easy thing to do.  Yet what is also very destructive is when we choose not to allow any compassion for ourselves.  Those of us suffering from a weight related issue usually understand the feeling of looking in the mirror and simply seeing ourselves as fat and lazy.  This sort of negative thinking perpetuates itself and can create a never-ending cycle of self-criticism.  Where is the compassion in that?  If we only understand our current disposition we are cheating ourselves of the explanation of why.  Some of us have sadly been abused, neglected, or bullied and these negative events have contributed to who we are today. 

We cannot leave out biology.  Because we are all unique, we all have different ways of dealing with stress and negative events.  Some of us eat, while others of us starve.  Some individuals work a lot and others of us do nothing at all.  Some of us develop depression or anxiety not to mention all this pain can make us feel very isolated.  We are all inspired when we read or hear a story of someone who conquered his or her impossible odds.  Stories that narrate a rags to riches tale seem to ignite something in our hearts that make us urn for being more than what we feel we have become.  This is when we need to remember to give ourselves and the people around us compassion.  It does not mean we have to agree with how they choose to handle their lives.  What it means however, is that we need to remember that we are not struggling with something for no reason and the people we come in contact with are in the same boat we are.  So this week and for the rest of your lives I hope you are able to give yourself and others the compassion they deserve as fellow brothers and sisters who are striving in this life just as you are.