The last 6 months living on the East Coast has been extremely troubling. I like to think of myself as an advocate and seek to understand social issues before weighing in. While externally my country has been in great turmoil on reconciling tough issues, what's been the most troubling is the reactions of people I call friends. I have witnessed my friends post extremist ideals and extremely hurtful "troll like" responses. I've began to reflect on how broken we all are and that I don't know these friends really well. Take a beat Coco, which is my way of saying don't rush to judgment.
I think now 2 months of reflection I realize when people are hurt and do not feel heard, the initial reaction/response seems to be anger. Anger, for me is not a useful reaction because it doesn't resolve the issue. I think a more compelling reaction is compassion. Now, I have to clarify, I often feel anger, but I redirect once I've had an opportunity to reflect on the root cause of the emotion. This mechanism for me has come as a result of years of therapy and a lot of internal work. I've found this approach to be much more helpful when trying to address extremely complex issues.
This post then leads me to ask, if we all took time to be more compassionate could we resolve longstanding issues? I would lean to think possibly, but it would also require us to be less self-righteous and more humble, two things I know I continue to struggle with. But, I think if we sought to be more compassionate we would also have to get closer to the problems. For some of us we would rather be side-line commentators, who express our anger, instead of helping to do the work to fix the problem. Or in some cases be a part of the movement to fix that helps fix the problem. I encourage you then to pick a side, the side of compassion.
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