Gratitude for the circumstances in my life - the things and people - comes easy for me, but compassion for others seems to be escaping me lately. It seems that a line has been drawn. People on one side receive compassion..... people on the other do not. I have lost my patience and understanding of some.
Oddly, it is not the people you might expect me to be impatient with. It is not those down in their circumstances, desperately trying in what ever way they can to survive. Those I can feel compassion for because I know full well it is often only one or two missteps along the path that leads one there. It could very easily be me.
The ones I have difficulty feeling compassion for these days are people who have all the opportunities to make the best of their lives. The ones who have 'privilege' and flaunt it like it makes them 'better than' others. If you are blessed enough to have privilege, use it to make a better world for everyone, don't just hoard the gold. Making the world a better place usually ends up blessing you in unexpected ways in the long run anyway.
There is another group of people I find difficulty feeling compassion for too, although it is easier to scrape some together if I don't just react, but instead, feel. This is the group who do insanely stupid things. Like stocking up on ridiculous amounts of toilet paper for a disease that doesn't actually give you any reason to need it, from what I hear tell. When I 'feel' into their thinking, I know it is fear based panic and I can think that perhaps they just don't have the ability to think things through; or perhaps they didn't have the environment around them to encourage individual thinking. I can feel some compassion. It may not be totally their fault that they think that way.
But a person of privilege has no such excuse. They have all of today's gadgets and connections to research and educate themselves even if no one else bothers. Even if no one else cares. It is their responsibility to do that.
But I also have begun to think perhaps I am okay with losing my compassion for some. I have been the mediator; the go-between; the person struggling to hold things together when all is chaotic. The one who hangs in there to calm the situation. So I wonder, is it compassion that is waning, or is it perhaps discernment kicking in. Am I perhaps just making the choice not to work so hard helping people who are too self absorbed to care.
Focusing on only what is important in my life will give me the calmness necessary to do a good job of the important things and leave the rest to come to a conclusion of their own creation.
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