On Compassion

Compassion is a difficult thing.  Difficult, because the word is plagued by misrepresentation in Hallmark greeting cards and sappy commercials guilting you into spending "just a dollar a day" to feed some kid in a war-torn nation.  It is much maligned by war-mongers (of which our nation has an abundance), and capitalists alike.  Especially those clinging desperately to ideas of Social Darwinism to justify the destruction and destitution of many for the profit of a few.

But what about "real compassion".  The Wikipedia definition says:

Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy (for the suffering of others) are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.

Well shit, highest foundations of society and personhood, huh?  I think America fails at compassion.  That's a digression though... or maybe it's the kernal.  Anyways, it's not exactly what I have to say right now.

Compassion for the kid over in Rwanda whom you could feed for "a dollar a day"  is meaningless.  Well, it is meaningful, but that's not where we start.  That compassion is too big.  In order for that compassion to be meaningful, I can't just send a dollar a day to Rwanda.  I have to examine every part of my individual life to asses how the life I live helps to create that poverty.  And then begin to change things.  That's how the scale works.  And most people aren't ready to start on that scale.

But again, to have compassion for those in abject poverty and suffering, that is obvious and easy.  Because their suffering is more abstract.  The closer to home the suffering gets, the more difficult it is to have compassion.  Sure, send a dollar a day to the kids in Rwanda, but those assholes down the street on wellfare, well they're just lazy sonsofbitches sucking the teat of the state dry, wasting my tax money.  They probably traded all their food stamps for drug money.

But this is still a digression.  Because it is always easier to have compassion for someone who is obviously suffering, obviously in a lower and weaker position than you.  But what about having compassion for those above you or equal to you?  Compassion for your boss who made you work overtime and miss your daughter's dance recital.  Compassion for the police officer who pulled you over for speeding five miles over the speed limit on a country road.  Compassion for a friend who has betrayed your confidence and stolen your lover.  That compassion is the most difficult.  Because it is the most likely to be labeled as weakness.  Above all else, it requires compassion for yourself.

Ah, now that's the seed.  Compassion for yourself.  That is the most difficult.  That is the one that requires the most courage and resolve.  It requires acknowledging your needs and your weaknesses, and focusing on them long enough to figure out how to fulfill them.  It requires that you pursue what you need first, above the needs of others, but also that you accept and live with the consequences.  To be so honest with oneself can be terrifying.  There is a pagan saying, "Where there is fear, there is power."  To be compassionate with yourself is to face your fears.  To find the power within yourself and manifest it in the world.

And what about having compassion for your boss?  Or the friend who seems to be walking all over your emotions and taking advantage of your generosity?  Compassion doesn't mean not standing up to exert your desires.  But maybe it means understanding that this person is on their own path, and is acting out of an attempt to fulfill their needs as best they know how with the tools they have.  And if there is conflict, maybe compassion means being brave enough to acknowledge the conflict, give it full voice and express your anger and hurt and resentment and then maybe to start to heal the conflict.  For me, compassion means giving myself permission to express anger when I feel it, to the person making me angry.  To stand up for myself and assert my needs, because only by communicating my anger can the wound that causes it truly start to heal.

And perhaps compassion also means to sometimes decide that a need is not a need.  Or that the need of another is greater.  But only when I am truly honest with myself about my feelings and intentions can I tell the difference.  Maybe that is the wisdom that comes with age and experience and self-reflection.  So compassion is also an ongoing, lifelong journey.

All I know is, people need more compassion.  With compassion comes courage, integrity, power, and beauty.  Hell, who doesn't want those things? People who are convinced that they need to live inside their own personal hell, that's who.

Ginger  

Free Radical

I recently purchased a Free Radical, which I will use to convert a mountain bike into an Awesome Utility Bike. My intention is to use it to become a bicycle powered construction contractor.  Or just enable me to never need a car.

The words "free radical" also feel right.  Very close to my current psychological and spiritual state.  Now, more than ever before, I am succeeding at becoming myself.  "Fulfilling my destiny" sounds a little too melodramatic and pretentious, but something along the lines of becoming the person I imagine myself to be in my dreams.  Resolving cognitive dissonance, to me, means finding a balance: between being fully present to each moment and enjoying life to the fullest extend with things such as they are, and at the same time striving to change the discomforting and upsetting things in myself and the world around me. 

The biggest cognitive dissonance I find staring me in the face on a daily basis is thus:

Cars: gasoline powered personal vehicles, and all of the infrastructure and economy that comes along with them... are destroying our society, environment, and personal health.  "Cars" themselves are not the problem, per say.  But the paradigm in which it is considered more "efficient" to use a two ton combustion vehicle to convey individual human across town, rather than for them to use a bicycle, or for our society to invest in public transportation, or to even take the time to walk a long ways.  This situation is only really "efficient" within an extremely narrow set of parameters, excluding a vast array of other conditions and factors.  (I could go on here, but I think I'll dedicate this rant to a separate post). But, on a daily basis, I find it necessary to drive a vehicle, either for work or borrowed from a friend for an errand, consume gasoline, and otherwise continue to feed the monster. Hence the bicycle project... 

 The same basic idea is similarly and succinctly argued in this poster, regarding the plastic spoon:

 This very basic dissonance is at the heart of most of my current motivations in life.  The underlying paradigm that feeds this reality in our society feels very, very wrong.  On a daily basis, it makes me want to kick and scream and shake people (especially co-workers) and tear things down and fuck shit up.  But I can't, because that wouldn't really be productive.  So I channel all that energy into various ways that I can reduce the influence of cars and petroleum in my life.

Right now it seems like I have two paths available to me (the dichotomy here is entirely linguistic - there are infinite paths and options, but for ease of discussion there are two main themes).

One is to become a Commercial Building Energy Consultant.  Or at least, to continue further down the path of being an Energy Auditor / Consultant.  The opportunities are certainly there.  It has the potential to be very lucrative.  Or least provide a stable income.  And it is totally within the realm of "working for a greater change".  It also involves a lot of computer work, data analysis, dressing and acting more in the official "Consultant" role.  Things that would all be Challenging Growth Opportunities... or would I really just be fighting against my inner nature to try and fit a role I'm not sure I'm comfortable with...? If I do this, it will have to be on my own terms.  In the past, when I've tried to fit myself into some corporate image of "The Professional" everything just feels wrong and icky.  But the options and possibility to pursue this Energy Consultant path are definitely there.  I could take it and run with it and rock the shit out of that shit. 

The other path is less clear.  It feels warm and fuzzy.  Down that path I see art, and earthen building, and community, and a near constant struggle for money and stability.  But also glory.  This path seems like the path of being a construction contractor, but just using that as an umbrella for whatever project I get engaged in at any particular time.  This path involves getting paid to do my art.  It involves building earthen houses in Seattle.  It involves transforming myself into the community leader I want to be, to push and cajole people to get to know their neighbors and work together to grow food and build shit and work less and spend more time with their families.  This path also holds the adventures and travels and spiritual work that I feel so called to do.  It is more radical.  Fuck sitting at a computer running models and numbers to figure out how Albertsons can use less energy, or even be Net Zero.  I want to completely reconceive the building from the ground up (ok, yes, it is really important to work with the existing structure to make improvement, I just think that work is the wrong fit for me...).  I want to reconceive the community it serves, and the concept of the grocery store in the first place.  How can we expand farmers' markets and CSA's and urban farming to bring people closer to the source of their food and reconnect them to the earth, to the cycles of life?

Choosing one path does not necessarily exclude the other path, but as my dad has told me many times, "you gotta focus on something."  I gotta pick a thing and put my energy into it, to the exclusion of other things, in order to get good, to get into the craft of a thing.  Right now I choose earthen building.  It feels right.

But maybe I am also choosing to be a generalist.  I feel confident about my current choice to do earthen building, but I'm already looking beyond that to think of what I'll do in 15 or 20 or maybe five years, when my body stops cooperating with this choice.  Maybe the two paths I see now are not divergent, but will be woven together in a way I have yet to conceive.   As a generalist, maybe I can help span the gaps within each area of focus (farming, building, transportation, community) so that we can reconceive a healthier society.

Of course, for now, all of this is posturing.  I'm not personally involved in any long-term community groups, or working to build any particular structures.  I just have ideas.  For now, I'm still incubating and growing and moving around too much to work on building the things I'm thinking about.  But I've got plans.  For now, step one is building the FreeRadical.