Compassion

I am coming out another period of hurting--both physically and mentally.  I hurt mentally for most of 2006 after Mom died, then part of 2007, all of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 after Dad died and I was Executor.  I managed to remain free of serious hurt until 2010, but that was just for a few months when my right foot went south prior to Ultraman Canada.  Then I had a reprieve on physical pain until fall 2010, and that spell lasted through fall of 2011.  I had a blissful 8 months of thinking I'd be good to go for Ultraman Hawaii, and then the bottom dropped out until recently.

I don't consider myself an expert on weathering shit, but I've had enough of it to know that things usually DO get better.  But I also know how difficult it is to believe that, and to even approach losing hope when in the thick of it.  And I also know how distorted thinking can warp my sense of reality.  How can I go from feeling like I'm on Cloud 9 to the dregs on the bottom of Montrose Harbor on Lake Michigan?  Some of that is driven by the exceedingly high expectations I have for myself, and if you search back in time on this blog, you will be frighteningly attuned to that. The higher you expect on average, the more I think you tend to hurt when you fall.

Each time I've fallen, I've asked the universe, "Why ME, why NOW, why does this feel worse than any other time?"  The why ME I can rationalize quite well--after all, there are many people with far worse problems than I have or have had.  Death is a part of life.  So none of us gets to escape that. Injury is a part of the game of endurance.  I pretty much always have something that physically isn't quite right.  The why NOW part is either out of my control (death, illness, aging and many accidents tend to be like that) or I did it to myself only didn't know it because it was a gradual process with a seemingly acute onset. I am still learning not to sweat the why NOW part if the cause is out of my control.

If the issue was self-inflicted, well then luckily I have this blind spot for that at times.  By blind spot, I mean not BELIEVING it's self-inflicted when it actually is. This helps me to mobilize my efforts to at least heal myself and maybe learn from my own mistakes.

The feeling of each new incident being worse than anything before is what puzzles me at times.  I don't really know if I actually DO feel worse than I ever have before (how can anything be worse than fearing for my own life when I was raped and robbed at gun and knifepoint?  I suppose it COULD be worse, but I don't want to imagine that), or whether I have just learned to "feel" more, or whether there is some threshold that I've gone over that makes it just appear that way.  Recently, I've begun to think that this is what drives me to feel greater compassion for someone else who is suffering.  And oddly enough, I can KNOW that while I'm in the depths of despair myself.  Last fall/winter, I tried my damndest to hold myself together and not appear to be suffering as much as I really was inside. Yet I know that others with perhaps greater compassion for me than I had for myself could see that I was suffering.  I would tell myself that no matter how badly I felt, that I must continue to have compassion for others.

So (as the Dalai Lama would say), it is important to try and continue to have compassion for oneself even in the face of suffering.  That is the hardest lesson for me to learn, but I am trying.

Sometimes the suffering comes about at the sense of loss of part of one's physical capabilities, on either a temporary or permanent basis.  I had some real health shockers last year, and I think I needed to grieve the loss of an aspect of youthfulness that was very important to me.  But since, I've settled into referring to myself as an "old lady" on numerous occasions, and realizing that like death, aging is just a part of life.  We'll see how much of that I can push off, but the aging process is something that absolutely requires you to have compassion for yourself.  None of us is the same person we were yesterday. 

The other aspect of why does each incident seem to feel worse than the other, I think, is to help you realize once you are past it, how amazingly wonderful life can be when it is not sucking the life out of you. I am amazed each time at how much I seem to appreciate little things, how colors appear brighter, music sounds better, and I laugh at so many things.  But I also know that you can't tell someone in the depths of despair that this is bound to happen.  Even though it will.

Meanwhile, I have several friends who are indeed suffering.  Now that I am feeling good again, it is painful to me to observe their suffering, and try as I might to help them, there is little I can actually do except to not abandon them and let them know that I do not think any differently about them in their state of suffering than under better circumstances.  I would ask that they try and be compassionate towards themselves, but I know how hard that can be since I'm not too good at it myself.

I am no Dalia Lama, but I've learned a thing or two about compassion. If I can just keep that one thing on the top of my thought process, I think I will have done well in this life.