Compassion for those we don't like....

It's a hard one. Really.

For the past week or so, I've gotten lost in my own "dislike Sarah Palin very strongly" club. (I won't say hate because I don't hate her. I just disagree with her on the most fundamental things.) I've allowed her to become a focal point for everything I dislike in US culture. To listen to her speak sets my teeth off - particularly since she has a voice that could shatter glass. Like a cat being dragged through a knothole in the fence comes to mind. I mean - truly - I don't like the woman. I don't like what she stands for and I don't like who she chooses to be.

On the other hand, I struggle with that tendencu because she is a product of her environment, just like I am. Just like most of us are. It's unlikely that she stood before the mirror one day and made a conscious decision to be who she is. She didn't sculpt herself from raw clay. She is a product of her environment, her culture, her upbringing and her spiritual conditioning. So far in her life, it's worked for her so I doubt she's done a lot of serious self-examination or made a deliberate choice to be the way she is.

So.. where I'm going with this is that I am trying (really trying) to find a place of compassion for her, to ferret out the good in her so that I can stop feeling the way I do. It's toxic for me, toxic for my environment, toxic for all of us - when one of us chooses to so strongly dislike someone that it overrides our compassion and commitment to our own values.

I'm sure she loves her kids. I'm sure she, no matter how much I disagree with her, cares about her country. She's not Mugabe. She's not Milosevic. She's not Hitler. She's a (in my mind) misguided person with some really screwy values. I'm sure she cares about something I care about - although it would probably take hours and hours of conversation between us to find that one kernel of likemindedness. We'd both have to dig and we'd both have to make a strong effort. Looking at it objectively though, even if we were trapped on an elevator together with no other options for company, I don't think she'd like me all that much, either - so that conversation would probably not take place.

Not so deep within me, I know that my non-acceptance of her as a person is just the flipside of what I perceive she does herself. I'm so rooted in my own sense of righteousness that I can't make room for her or her thinking. I "other" her because it's safer and easier than trying to find any commonality.

I know that's not good. This isn't really about Sarah Palin, although she's an expedient example. It's about me. It's about everyone who finds themselves trapped in "othering" behavior.

So.. what do we do when we find someone who so perfectly exemplifies everything that we find distasteful?

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

~*

As an aside, I found this link in someone's comments. It is one of the best articles I've seen yet on the topic of Sarah Palin. The comments attached to the article are good, too.

~*

Hitting the Wall

"Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among those who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour - unceasingly. This is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family." -Henri Nouwen

Sometimes I forget that I can be safe. That is especially true when I am afraid of being left behind, afraid of being unloved, afraid of being abandoned. It's those times when I take seriously the idea of compassion ~ even for me. My claws can dig deep, especially when I am afraid.

And in that, I have often hurt other people. I haven't been willing to let go when the time is right. I haven't been able to truly wish them well.

Then I have to remind myself about the expansiveness of who we all are ~ an expansiveness that makes us capable of compassion when we thought it was impossible.

I'm learning that lesson right now as I got some news yesterday from my doctor that I would have preferred to not hear. Due to the actions of others, I have an illness that will never leave. I can't get rid of it. Can't will it away. Can't pretend it doesn't exist. It does and it affects my ability to connect to others in a meaningful way, in a way that comes naturally to most. "It's permanent but it's treatable," he said.

I spent the evening in a slow burn, wanting to exact revenge on those who perpetrated this damage.

Then in the dead quiet of night, I came to understand that I can not expect to be forgiven if I do not forgive, if I do not honor the woundedness that caused the abuse that changed the hardwiring in my brain.

When I think of the people who did this, when I hear other stories of those who have survived childhood abuse, I choose to see in meditation - the perpetrators and me - held by the heart that is larger than all of us ~ and at the same time, a part of us.

I can't help but see on some level that they were both children once, too. They both had hopes and fears. That way it becomes possible to somehow connect us, to make me understand a bit more.

While there are certainly degrees of hurt, I'm not sure there are differences in kind. What hope do I have of being held in that same large heart if I close mine to those who hurt me ~ but continue in my own human way to hurt others by hanging on so tight that it's difficult to let people go when they need to go?

If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Cho Seung-Hui and Compassion....

I'd planned on writing this post later today. Julie has requested discussion on justice and forgiveness. It sounds like an interesting project. Her site has some of the most interesting debates in the comment forum I've ever seen!

I'd scratched a few notes together last night and this morning. While making the blog rounds earlier, I found a post that speaks to all the basics needed in any discussion of justice, forgiveness and compassion. It is located here. I can add nothing. I will let that post speak for me, although I don't have the writer's permission to do so yet. I can only expand on it, become a branch, using anecdote to show how we might get past the need for justice and forgiveness to finally find compassion.

In my own transformation, the greatest hurdle has been to achieve detachment from the need to equalize the scales, to make wrong things right and to have that ego-created sense of balance. Instant karma. That has been my ultimate spiritual challenge.

Letting go of that was ~ and still is ~ a struggle at times.

Yet in thinking it over in light of both my family news and the Virginia Tech shootings, I realize fully that it is not my place to exact justice or offer forgiveness. It's simply not my right to do so. I get that.

Who am I to judge another?

During the day yesterday, there were many reports about the Virginia Tech shooter, his background and his struggles. He was obviously a tormented human being. The red flags flew at full mast for a very long time before he walked into Norris Hall and opened fire.

Even given the havoc he wreaked on the community, I believe it is necessary to find compassion for him. His struggle was the struggle of many, although perhaps not to the same extreme degree. Human beings need community. We were created that way. In finding ourselves ostracized and rejected, especially without explanation, our minds take us to strange places. I posted about this last week. Some might become more inward, self-soothing with booze, drugs, promiscuity or fantasy. Others lash out, only finding relief in bringing harm to others, those they perceive as their oppressors. He didn't "snap". This decompensation has been escalating for a long, long time.

Cho Seung-Hui is the ultimate example of someone who tried to balance the scales on his own, to exact judgement and, yes, justice on his community.

It is easy to demonize and dismiss him. He did a terrible, devastating thing. If we dare to look at his humanity, we see our own reflection in his eyes. We see ourselves as a failed community. We see ourselves as a failed culture. We see ourselves as flawed individuals. Do we see in that reflection our own complicity?

So how do we find that compassion? I wish I had a packaged answer. I'm not the Dalai Lama but just one more struggling woman in the mass of humanity that surrounds me. I take comfort and wisdom from the Southeast Asian culture I have embraced. I have no ultimate wisdom, no superior understanding.

I know that when I go to that very quiet and still place within myself and allow it, I can feel it. The compassion. When I shed tears for the 32 murdered students, I can shed a tear for Cho Seung-Hui at the same time. The tears blend together and water the seed of compassion that lives in my silence.


Peace,


~Chani