#5 Flawed, Not Flayed

 

When I think back to the time I became conscious of my interest in compassion, I remember the day I went to Chapters and picked up the book there.

I don’t much like shopping, particularly when I don’t have money. And while I know that some people absolutely love window shopping, to me, it’s like teasing yourself with the things you can’t have.

The only time I don’t feel badly about window shopping is when I walk into a bookstore. There, I feel surrounded with the words, thoughts and feelings of thousands of people. I can spend hours in a bookstore being inspired. It is wondrous.

That special day at Chapters, more than ten years ago now, I happened to pause in the spiritual/self-help part of the store, and a book caught my eye. On the cover is a picture of a dirty, old Converse sneaker with a lotus flower growing out of it. It’s a simple image, but it is very powerful. I’ve always loved the concept of beauty coming from unlikely places, and that’s what the cover image seems to imply.

The book is called The Compassionate Life: Walking the Path of Kindness by Marc Ian Barasch.

I’ve read this book at least two times since I bought it. In fact, when I joined an existential book club through Meetup a few years ago, I proposed that we read it. I was so excited to dive into that book again, with the intent, this time, to discuss it with other people.

Would it have the same effect on them that it had had on me?

After I read the book that first time, I looked at the world a little differently. I started to think about things more consciously.

We all like to believe we are good people, and I do think it is important for us to see that in ourselves. Walking around thinking poorly of ourselves can’t possibly have a positive result. But I also think that it is important to try to live out these beliefs in active ways. It is not enough to just sit on our asses and bask in our goodness. It is our responsibility to cultivate and propagate that goodness among those around us, whether they are loved ones or strangers.

But while we may be good, we are also inherently flawed beings, and expecting everyone to have the same perspective would be rather naive.

I realize that describing us as inherently flawed may be construed as controversial. In fact, a few months ago, I encountered just such resistance on that very topic. When a Bell technician came to do some repairs in my apartment, I could hear from his accent that he was from the Caribbean. So I started a discussion with him, and we spoke about the horrors Haiti finds itself in. He was from Jamaica, and he said something about how Haitians are far superior at wielding machetes than Jamaicans are. Don’t ask me why he chose to make connections between Haitians and their capacity for brutality, but there we were. The topic was skewing rather negatively, so I tried to move the subject away from how my countrymen, in particular, are adept at attacking people with these farm tools, and I chose to focus instead on humanity’s weaknesses on a whole.

I mentioned how humans are fundamentally flawed beings and connected that to how some people go the route of violence to fill a part of themselves that is hopelessly empty. The technician was strong in his beliefs of the contrary.

At first, I thought he might be joking, but then I saw how serious he looked, and I said: “You don’t think humans are fundamentally flawed?”

He shook his head no. He seemed to think that humans were perfect, adding a certain element of confusion to the conversation given what he’d just revealed about Haitians.

Ok, fair enough. I could respect his viewpoints without agreeing with them. He didn’t try to change my mind, and I didn’t try to change his.

But I do believe that we are inherently flawed. If I were to take a leaf from that man’s book, I would posit that we are perfectly imperfect. And I think that one of the greatest motivators for many humans is to strive toward perfection, though we must know on some level that it will never happen.

There are some people who see this striving toward perfection, or excellence (as I prefer to call it), as a fool’s errand. After all, if we can never reach it, what is the point? That has always seemed to me to be a rather defeatist perspective. Should we only attempt things that we feel will guarantee us success?

Last year, I decided to take a certification exam as a way to keep my skills sharp and see how much more work needs to be done to reach a level of excellence that I’m satisfied with. The examination body seemed proud of the fact that only 29% of test takers would pass this exam. Personally, I find that number atrocious. That doesn’t seem like something you should be proud of. Such a low pass rate seems more indicative of an issue with the exam than with the test takers. However, this is the state of affairs, so I work with what I’m given.

 

A defeatist perspective might be to not bother taking the test at all because the chances of passing are so low. And when you factor in the expense of the exam, the time you have to take away from work to study for it and the cost of the supplementary resources you will need to purchase to study for it, it may not seem like a reasonable pursuit. In my perspective, however, if I hadn’t tried, I would have always wondered whether I could rise to the occasion. I took the test because I wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to see how I would do, I wanted to reach for excellence. I still don’t know if I have passed the test, but, chances are—if I haven’t—I will study some more and take it again one day, hoping for a better result.

Another perspective is the “perfect conditions” perspective. Some people have a goal to do something, but unless the conditions are perfect, they won’t even start. Someone in my circle of loved ones has a goal to help out a lot of people. He’s had a very detailed plan for a long time on how to accomplish this goal. But he’s been waiting for the exact right circumstances in order to put those plans into action. Meanwhile, five years have gone by, and those people haven’t been helped.

I asked him one day, “So, how long are you going to wait until the time is right? The climate hasn’t been in your favour thus far, and you haven’t been able to make things happen for the past five years. How much longer will you wait?”

He had a plan for that too. “I gave myself a deadline: two more years.”

“What happens to your project if the circumstances don’t improve by that deadline?”

“Nothing. I walk away.”

“You mean those people you want to help won’t get any help at all?”

“Nope.”

In his mind, if he can’t implement his whole plan in the exact way he wants, he won’t do anything at all.

On that front, he and I see things very differently.

If my goal is to help others, then I will help at even the most minute levels. I might not have tons of money to set up a whole project or subsidize health care for a sector of needy people. This is a limitation; I acknowledge that.

But just because I don’t have the finances to roll out a big project doesn’t mean that I can’t sign up to be a big sister for the Children’s Aid Society or that I can’t befriend a homeless person and learn how best to help them or that I can’t volunteer at any number of places to assist my fellow humans in some way.

Compassion doesn’t have to be a massive act that involves hundreds, thousands or millions of dollars. It doesn’t have to help, or save, thousands of people. If you die having helped improve only one person’s life, does that make your contribution worth less?

I don’t think so. In my opinion, any act of compassion is worth something. And you may never even realize how far-reaching that one act toward one person can go. Small, singular acts can be just as valuable.

To return to the book . . . I believe that Marc Ian Barasch wrote a masterpiece. His is the book on compassion that has influenced me the most, though I admit that there are plenty out there I haven’t read yet.

Chapter 1 is called “The Circle of Compassion” where he introduces the concept of compassion, how we have learned to interpret it, and how others have incorporated it into their lives. He talks about his own journey and describes how nonlinear the road he is walking has been. He’s just a regular human being, like you and me. He is not a spiritual leader who has spent his whole life living by this credo. He is flawed and freely admits those flaws. He shows us his vulnerable side, and says: This is who I am, but I still love myself.

Early in the chapter, he talks about how he was “tricked” into agreeing to a life of compassion. And at one point on his journey, he says this happened:

I stopped thinking so much about how others had let me down, broken my heart, failed to anticipate my needs or take my oh-so-unique sensitivities into account. I began striving to see—even nourish—other people’s possibilities, receiving in return those surprise connections the human spirit dishes out when it feels accepted and at ease.

Those words struck me quite profoundly because these are things I struggle with on a regular basis. How do I balance my own feelings of self-worth with how I accept to be treated? How do I minimize my judgment of others, but still honour my own boundaries? How can these two things co-exist?

I have to go back to the concept of imperfection, here, because it’s a running theme in my life; it reminds me never to rest on my laurels. I am here to learn, to grow, to become better. I will never attain perfection, but that is not the true purpose of my life’s journey.

I am not going to be the best editor in the world.

I will not be the best girlfriend in the world.

I will not be the best daughter or sister or friend in the world.

But I am not trying to compare myself to everyone one else in the world either. What is important to me is to become the best person I can be. I am trying to reach the heights of my own potential.

I can see my weaknesses, and I can see my strengths. I want my weaknesses to transition into neutral things that no longer negatively affect me or others. And then I want to go one step further and take those neutral things and transform them into positive things. I want to take those weaknesses, those wounds, and heal them until they scar over and something new and fresh emerges. I want be a better friend, daughter, editor, girlfriend. I want to offer of myself and make life sweeter for others.

But I also want to make life sweeter for me. Apparently these are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the elusive “they” often say these two things come hand in hand.

 

At the end of the first chapter of The Compassionate Life, Marc writes (can I call him Marc? I’m gonna call him Marc because I feel very close to him) the perfect quote with which to end the chapter.

He borrows from Saint John of the Cross, who said:

Where you find no love, put love, and you will find love.

It feels like an extraordinarily vulnerable act to put love where you see none. It is risky and scary, and there is no guarantee of what you will find on the other side. But it is also a powerful act of courage, and there is something to be said about that.

In my flawed state, amid the many mistakes I make daily, weekly, monthly, I try to reach into myself and find some grace: for myself, for those I love, for those I like, for those I don’t particularly like and for those I don’t even know. Some days, I’m more successful at these things than other days. But I’m going to keep raising my hand every single time in favour of this grand, life project because there is no negative output to compassion.

It can only bring good to the world, and that seems like a pretty worthy goal.

Until next time.