Use Compassion to Cope

It is sometimes, often really, hard to know what to say. Today is one of those times. I am grieving too. For personal losses and the losses of those I never knew. There is sadness in the air. It’s o.k.

I’m not going to tell you to put it in perspective, whatever it is for you. Because loss is both personal and universal. We all know it. We’ve all experienced grief – and we know we will again —  and yet each time we must also face it alone. And, it hurts like crazy.

Many of us are feeling grief over the unfathomable events at Sandy Hook. Others are also dealing with personal losses and struggles. It feels confusing. Hard. We try to make sense of things that are nonsensical. We experience things in our lives that feel unbearable for awhile, and then we bear them. Allow yourself room to feel all this, even when it’s hard.

Often, when it’s uncomfortable, we think we can’t survive so we move into and onto things that deflect the emotion. We begin blaming. We get angry. We judge others. We deny. We make the discussion political instead of personal. Because it feels better to argue and criticize than to feel the sadness that is certain to tear us apart.

But, it won’t. This sadness. If we use it to inspire love and compassion, it will be the thing that brings us together. We can’t undo. But you can decide how you are going to live with your sadness in this moment. And the next. You can make the moments of your own life matter, and when you do that you touch the rest of us. We don’t have to wait for bad things to happen to love better and when we do it moves us and our grief into a spot that feels a little bit lighter.

I talk about this in the note I posted on Facebook Friday:

 “Today, then, as we continue the discussion rightly about gun control and other legislation, please too, let’s commit to loving better. To being kinder to our kids, more accepting of our partners. Being peaceful in our homes and neighborhoods. To looking others in the eye and saying thank you and helping them know that they matter. Because they do. Even if they aren’t easy or pretty or smart or wealthy, they matter. Let us support financially and emotionally the people who need our support, our neighbors and the kid next door, and the overworked single mother, so that they never, ever feel like the only way out is of their own hurt is to hurt themselves or someone else. Let us care by providing mental health support to those who need it and better education to all. By cutting the crap on T.V. and filling the air with music and art to inspire us to be our best. Let us love the kids, who aren’t being loved, and there are plenty of those.

We can do this. We can love better, we can take care of each other, we can lead with compassion. Bad things are still going to happen, I know, I am not wholly naive, but I’ve seen the power of kindness. It is sustaining and love is life changing. This is something each of us can do right now. So when we respond today with sadness and anger and despair, let us remember to also love better than we ever have. Let us use all that we have personally, politically, spiritually, intellectually, physically to keep this from ever happening again.” <<<

Let us also, be inspired to do this before tragedy strikes. We can do it in the best of times to elevate this experience. Compassion is not conditional. We can use it all the time and it is not reliant on anyone else. It’s a choice to be loving and compassionate or not. Even when people are behaving badly, we can act with compassion. It matters not what the others in your life are doing.

We don’t have to wait until trauma like 9/11 or Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy or school shootings, to come together and care for each other. To nurture one another. To hold on to those who can’t do it for themselves. We can do this always. It is who we are. And, in doing that we can inspire positive change in the laws, and neighborhoods, and each other. Start small if you want — offer a pat on the back, a kind smile, tolerance for someone different — but make a connection today, with compassion.

It is the one thing we can do when we feel like there is nothing else.