It has been a pretty intense day, to cap a pretty intense week for what is looking to be a pretty intense month - you get the idea. While I am facing some personal and family health challenges, at this time, I am guessing that most people are facing something - although it doesn't really serve anyone to compare themselves to others, which is why I generally take a, keep your eyes on your own plate approach to life.
This doesn't mean ignoring others however, which means that regardless of what I am going through myself, I tend to spend more time listening to the state of others. Perhaps there is some catharsis in the act of listening also, but I do it because there have been a number of times in my life where a friendly ear would have been welcomed, but there were none to be lent. In a world that has fragmented and disconnected many from each other, I think we have to be more engaged in being open, to be a support, a little more giving, a little less stingy with our time.
Over the last months of lockdown, I have spent quite a lot of effort and time contacting colleagues and dropping various lines or making calls just to "check-in" with them and see how they are coping. Of course, it isn't as direct, just asking "How are you doing?" and seeing what arises. It hasn't taken much for people who would normally be closed off to open up and discuss quite personal topics.
It is easy to focus on our own struggles and say we don't have the bandwidth for those of others, but perhaps if we did spend a little time listening, we would find more effective ways of coping. When we listen to others it is common to at least question "What would I do?" in a, if I was you I would... kind of way and even though we need not offer this forward - we can learn from it. Often what we would do is different to what we are actually doing and listening to others can discover ourselves reflected back, something I will explore in another post.
Because of the way we process information, we will always affect the meaning of the incoming stream, meaning that we are actively influencing what we hear. We have to do this in order to turn it into a form of communication that we can understand, we can relate to. We can hear about the problems of another, but we understand it with ourselves as the point of reference, as we can never be anything other than who we are and never fully be in the shoes of another, even if we feel we are empathetic.
I am not a fan of empathy as much as compassion. With empathy I have to feel some kind of connection to act with it normally meaning that rather than helping, we put ourselves in the gutter with another - which is not much help at all. With compassion though, I don't need to feel what another is feeling, I just have to understand that what they are feeling they feel as a negative - meaning I can offer some kind of support, without having to be like them. Empathy tends to mean that we will help people like ourselves - compassion means we are more likely to help people who need help.
A lot of people might not make this distinction, but I see it as an important one for a community to strengthen for as the saying goes, it takes all types. Ignoring some parts because they are not similar doesn't mean that those parts aren't valuable to the community itself. If the ignorance of others continues for too long, we grow apart from each other but may still feel appropriately empathetic, even though we have no understanding of their shoes at all.
A lot of damage can be done trying to help people thinking that we know who they are, without knowing who they are. Rather, compassion means discovering what they need, which is generally an upstream issue, not the symptomatic problem of the edge of the waterfall. Yes, the immediate dangers need to be addressed, but unless something is done upriver, there will always be the immediate danger, leaving no resources for solving the cause of the issues.
Anyway, this is a bit of weird post perhaps, but what I wanted to say was that we all have challenges in our lives, but we don't have to give up our role in a community to deal with them. We might not have much to give, but we can usually find time to lend an ear.
How are you doing?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]