On Compassion In My Life

(from an email to a mediation teacher)

I have wondered for some time, what is the difference between lovingkindness vs compassion, so today’s class was of special interest to me.  Here are some of the thoughts I had.

LovingKindness:

You suggested that we might try extending love and friendship to one of the other persons in the virtual class, all of whom I do not know, except for you.  I find this very hard to do, to extend love or friendship to someone I don’t know. I am, at least in some ways, a rather guarded person.  What if I extend love or friendship to someone I don’t know, and they want to reciprocate that, and then I find out later that I don’t really find them very interesting or lovable, and/or they are very needy?  I just don’t want to take that chance.  Because then, if I were totally honest with them, which I probably would not be, I would have to tell them that I find them dull or bigoted or needy or sad or negative or….fill in the blanks.  There’s probably more to this than what I have just written, but that’s what I am getting right now today.

Compassion:

I found this much easier to dwell in, perhaps due to this experience I had about 40 years ago.  My then wife, named Leslie, had cajoled me into getting into therapy, at first couples therapy, which later migrated to a therapy group (where I later met Nadine, and obviously, the couples therapy did not save that first marriage.)  I was very leery of therapy at first; telling my most innermost thoughts and feelings to a total stranger? or strangers?  

For the first few weeks in group, I was basically silent, listening to others, but not venturing out of myself.  One of the people in the group was a younger woman named Sue Haden.  It turned out, her brother was Pat Haden, who had been a star quarterback at USC, and then went on to play for the Rams.  Sue related that she had been to a Rams game in the Coliseum, and the Rams as a whole and Pat in particular were having a bad afternoon.  The fans around her began riding her brother, with shouts like “get him out of there”!  She knew her brother was trying his best, and she was very shocked and hurt by the anger that she saw being directed at him by these people around her.  As Sue was relating this story, I began to silently tear up, as I felt a lot of compassion for the situation she described.  The therapist noticed what was happening with me, and asked me how I was feeling.  I was able to open up for the first time in that group, and for the first time in a long time in my life, and say how sad I felt for Sue as she told her story.  From then on, thankfully, I was more open about my feelings in the group, and eventually with others in my life. 

As you and we dwelt on compassion today, I did feel some warmth in my body, though I still usually find it hard to experience most feelings much in my body; they are mostly in my head.