Compassion can be hard to give and confusing to receive.
Experiencing suffering, to me, is the spiritual equivalent of eating our green vegetables. The trauma that can be associated with the suffering is what makes us feel unworthy of empathy or compassion.
I am grateful for the suffering I have experienced in my life. I know that it has added value through giving me grit, toughness, endurance, patience, perspective and the wisdom that comes from living a life with the previously listed traits.
The traumatic experiences I’ve gone through, I’m not so sure I’m ready to be grateful for those yet. I’ll need more meditation, journaling sessions, help and life experiences before that gratitude comes around, if it does.
But the suffering, that really has helped me. I really am grateful for the suffering I have experienced. Getting to the other side of it and looking back on the trials by fire, molded me beneficially. Certainly for survival, for thriving, well maybe not so much. A hardened edge with layers of empathy and compassion is preferable to walking around as an open wound.
Because of suffering; I’m much more grateful for the self compassion I give myself in dark times, and exponentially more grateful to others, who extend empathy and compassion to me in trying times. People that give empathy and compassion are the real ones and in my experience are few and far between. Those are the ones to keep close and prioritize relationship nurturing.
The suffering I have experienced has made me empathetic to the suffering of others. When I see suffering written on people’s faces while they try to go about their lives and maintain normalcy and sanity, as I have, I gain instant respect for their strength and courage. It takes monumental strength and courage just to keep the train on the tracks sometimes.
Giving ourselves, and others compassion is a zero cost gesture with infinite reward. To feel a token tinge of love and appreciation in the world eases the burden of existence.
Compassion is love adjacent, and we all need more love. Compassion, empathy, love are real and we all need more real. Because real is hard, fake is easy. Indifference, harshness, and hate are easy. The strength it takes to be vulnerable and understanding to the pain and confusion experienced by ourself and others is as remarkable as it is immeasurable.
And we need more remarkable and immeasurable in this world almost as much as we need more love and understanding almost as much as we need more empathy and compassion.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 