Compassion, A Superpower
Not A Weakness
By Katja Cahoon
n previous articles I
have discussed not
fighting emotions,
working with your body and nervous system and your beliefs and thoughts to manage difficult emotions. But now I want to focus on compassion – a superpower that has a very real effect on body and mind.
When we think about compassion these two concerns typically come up:
1) Compassion is weak,
permissive, letting yourself or
others get away with things.
2) Compassion is abstract and/or hard to do. Some people find it easy to have compassion with others, but not themselves.
Compassion means seeing the suffering and being moved to action. It means acknowledging that there is pain and based on that taking appropriate action. There is nothing weak or permissive about it. Let’s take someone who is misbehaving, acting in hurtful or even harmful ways. We have plenty of examples of that over the past 18
months (and of course beyond).
Racism, white supremacy, hate, aggression against certain
groups of people, and violence are more visible than ever.
James Baldwin wrote, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
This quote gets at the root of it: people acting in hateful, violent ways are often also in pain. White supremacy, patriarchy, and inequality hurt all of us. We can recognize that without condoning it. We can see the pain behind the hate and stand up, fight racism and discrimination, and do whatever we can to reduce inequities. We can call people in instead of out – Loretta Ross speaks powerfully about this in her TED talk – “fighting hate should be fun. It’s being a hater that sucks.” Compassion is not acceptance.
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