Musings on LOVE: On Being Gentle, take II

We are just babies in grown up bodies

 

Over the course of the past year, I have been put through an accelerated path of (hopefully, finally) learning how to embody COMPASSION.  For years now, whenever I struggle others have always advised to "Be Gentle."  Personally, I find this absolutely confounding!  We have been raised within a culture as well as a civilization that practices degrading violence and horrific acts of force.  We plunder the Earth's natural resources to feed our addiction to greed.  We steal from each other at the threat of the sword and then we force those who we have stolen from to buy back from us what we have taken.  Without a second thought, we condone these behaviors with our own mindless consumption.  We refuse to notice our culpability in the whole and instead we use words like, "I love you," in a feeble attempt to make it all better.  It's confusing and, as a result, we should all allow ourselves to recognize how normal it is to be confused by such notions, as love, gentility, peace and compassion.

Last Thursday night, after I found myself hurt by what I allowed another to project onto me, I was advised that I should "love my neighbors like I love myself."  After a miraculous evening during which one of my "homeless" neighbors wandered into the Hive, enjoyed copious helpings of food and then wandered back out at his own timing and pace, I found this advice to be highly insulting.  Rather, in learning to be gentle to myself, first and foremost, what I am recognizing is that I cannot allow myself to just stand there and take the invisible blows cast upon me by those who are suffering.  In learning to have compassion, I honor that the behavior I must model is to not allow my neighbor to abuse me.  Turning the cheek after somebody slaps you is just plain silly advice.  I am finally learning to let go of my desire to fix, to let others be exactly where they are and to keep a healthy distance between myself and those who would strike out in their confusion.  As I recently shared with a sweet, new friend, "the hardest part of this now is that, like we were taught when we learned to swim, you cannot try to save a drowning person with your own body.  Rather, you must simply toss them a life preserver."

Hence, this blog is direct evidence of this.  My writing is a life preserver - take it and do with it what you will.  I have no desire nor need to be understood.  I understand myself in that I am a perfectly flawed and flawlessly perfect human being.  I allow myself my process, after all I am, like all great art, a work in progress.