Originally I wanted to make this blog about nutrition, the cold hard facts, the science of food. But as the weeks progress I find I rarely come back to the food facts. I will put some of that out, I promise, but each week there seems to be an event that triggers the desire in me to touch on a specific topic. Topics I think are important to bring into the light, things I think we need to be talking about if we actually want to make the world a better place.

This week I am struggling with compassion, or the lack there of. I think compassion is lacking on a large, more macro type scale involving groups of people, but also on a smaller, micro scale, involving our day to day interactions with others, but also with ourselves.

Larger scale I think a discussion of compassion goes hand in hand with a discussion on privilege, and a lack of compassion comes when two groups experience different levels of privilege. It makes sense, there is a change being requested, and while the change may be completely fair and reasonable, people do not like change and have to be allowed time to adapt, within reason.

As I write this I know I am writing as a person with certain privileges, I am a young, attractive,white, cis, hetero presenting person, which gives me a lot of privilege. I also have never suffered poverty because of the privilege of my cis, white, hetero father. He did work hard for the things he achieved, don’t get me wrong, but he still had less hurdles to jump to get there, that is his privilege and that privilege was passed, in part, to me. Hell, even being right handed gives me a certain amount of privilege in this world. But I also lack privilege due to being a demisexual, aromantic, polyamorous, not totally straight, and a woman. I have also been in a place where I was fairly overweight/obese and very physically and mentally ill and dealt with a lack of privilege in regards to health. As a result I find this gives me the ability to view privilege and compassion from a pretty objective position. Having the experience of both sides of the fence I am able to write this as someone who has received a lot of privilege and often struggled to see the hidden (to me) advantages I have received, and also as someone looking to be treated fairly in a world where inequality has been so ingrained in our culture it is just a way of or fact of life.

Smaller scale, Most of the time I literally can’t believe the way people talk to and treat each other. When I watch the people around me interacting I often feel sorrow. We treat strangers without decency, we see snippets of people’s lives and judge them on where they are right now based on our own experiences. I watch people approach each other harshly and abruptly, with impatience. We use this same approach with strangers and loved ones. I see this with people who are in the same social circles, people who I thought were friends, people I know to be lovers. I see them put up walls with each other. They don’t listen to what the other has to say, they spend the time other people are talking thinking about themselves, what they feel and what they need to say next. Never really listening or caring about what is going on for the other person. I find everyone wants their experiences of the world to be understood as individual but are not willing to understand the individual experiences of another. How can we expect of others what we are not willing to offer ourselves? I see people who think it is funny to prank and upset their loved ones. For some reason we take joy in the hurt, anger, embarrassment of another? How can we claim to love another when we take pleasure in such things? When I love someone I feel pain at their pain, joy at their joy.

Lastly, I think we struggle with feeling compassion for ourselves and I think this is the root of the problem. We are all big, insecure messes searching for validation in a world that is always telling us we can only rely on ourselves and yet we are filled with fantasies and fairy tales about true love, the one, and some unattainable goal of fulfillment in finding that person. We can’t seem to be our best selves because we are too busy being drug down by people, media, culture, consumerism….

Really I think it comes down to guilt. That’s what it always was for me anyways. Huge amounts of guilt about not being what I thought I aught to be, whether that be thin, happy, athletic, smart, cool or any number of other things. If we look deeper into other types of privilege this guilt could involve things like not being born with the right colour skin, not being able to just be happy in ones body, not being ok with maintaining less and watching other get more for nothing. These are irrational guilts and they kept me defensive, protecting myself and keeping me from really engaging and connecting with others. Guilt that kept me from self compassion.

Maybe if we could all start by being compassionate to ourselves, we could learn to be compassionate to other people. And I am not talking about being superficially positive, where we tell ourselves how awesome we are and plaster our Facebook with memes about self love and self care, but genuine love and compassion for ourselves. The kind that is as private and intimate as a connection with a lover. Imagine life if we created space to learn to accept and love the differences we have from others. It took me almost all of my 20’s to accept that I am a woman and realize it is okay for me to enjoy and display my more feminine qualities. What if we could forgive ourselves for our short coming, real or simply perceived, rather than feeling guilty or inadequate? What if we could forgive ourselves when we make a mistake and allow space to learn from it? What if we actually told ourselves when we did well, even going so far as to make space for gratitude for the things we bring into our own lives? What if we really appreciated ourselves? Could we reach a point where we are open to further growth, and where we don’t actively hate or down talk parts or all of ourselves? Imagine a life where we actually feel love for ourselves the way the love a parent feels for a child is often portrayed, unconditional and patient.

Imagine, if we loved ourselves, how we would be able to love others. Once we created a safe space to be ourselves by ourselves, we could create space for others to be themselves, we could understand that people are on their own journey and we could make space for people to grow. We could be patient with others, kind, allow space for others to take in new information and mull over it and maybe come to new understandings. Maybe not everyone would, but we could understand they are where they are in their journey, and while we didn’t agree would could limit exposure, but with compassion, not grudge. The compassion we offered would create a space for some of those people to eventually see things in a new way.

Maybe we could see things in a new way too. Maybe we could understand the experiences of others. I firmly believe two things in regards to compassion and privilege: One: those of us with privilege have a responsibility to ensure that privilege becomes more equally distributed and, Two: We all have a responsibility to approach others with compassion, We all have mental road blocks, blind spots due to the fact we can only experience the world through our own minds. If we are open to hearing the experiences of those with less privilege we may learn those blind spots, but if those of us with less privilege only want to share our stories in a defensive way it will more often create walls, defensive reactions, rather than change and understanding.

I do not claim I am free of all judgment and approach all things with compassion. I see judgments and other non compassionate traits in myself often, more so in the past as I have been working on being compassionate. I feel shame for my internal reactions though I remain kind to myself and I endeavor to be aware of these things and reduce their occurrence in the future. To be open and compassionate instead. I want to create space around me where people can come, be themselves and be understood, though I know I still have work to do. I personally was blind to a lot of my own privileges (and lack of if I am honest. I denied the lack of privilege I received as a woman for a long time due to the culturally ingrained patriarchy, it was just the way it was to be a woman and I accepted that) until I could really listen to another. But that open listening required someone telling me the facts with compassion, not judgment. We can tell others the honest facts and consequences of a thing without moving from a place of compassion. We cannot discuss gender equality without talking about toxic masculinity and the toll it takes on men. We cannot talk about racism without talking about the cultural baggage white people have to recognize and unload. We cannot talk about accepting LGBTQ+ orientations without making space for hetero-normative folks to unload culturally defined definitions of normalcy. It’s hard, it’s all fucking hard, I get it. But I cannot believe I live in a world where the majority of people are unwilling to change and grow, to do the work. It’s not any easier without compassion though, and what does it really take from us to be kind to another?

Two of my favorite resources on compassion:

1. The story of a black man who befriended KKK members. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/daryl-davis-klan-race-relations-edmonton-1.4866741
2. This reminder that we can lay the truth out for others with compassion and care but still expect them to step up. https://www.facebook.com/semona.baston/videos/10212320585155522/