How We Keep Caring
What I am finding about this time of COVID-19 is that it is heightening and clarifying what was already here. Not only on a larger scale where our decisions have led us as a people and a nation, but also on a smaller scale of our inclinations. Introversion and extroversion. Risk taking and playing by the rules. Reality and escaping. Productivity and apathy. This time is shedding light on all of them . . . perhaps most of all compassion.
I have always been led by a sense of compassion with justice right alongside it, especially since living in the Dominican Republic and the perspective that witnessing life in that place gave me. Never before had I been approached again and again with need after need and no way to do anything to touch it. I was just one person. It was in the Dominican Republic that I realized how coming up against the reality of our human condition can sometimes leave us feeling flooded and at other times feeling blocked. Flooded is the overwhelming feeling that comes when it is all up to you and you are not enough. Blocked is when you shut down because it's all too much.
Now I find myself in the face of a global pandemic, and compassion and justice are rising up even stronger. I fully understand and receive the message to stay at home. What I cannot get away from are the people who do not have a home. What does this mean for our sisters and brothers experiencing homelessness? I fully understand all the reasons to want to open up our country, but what about the people of color who are dying at a disproportionate rate because they don’t have a choice about whether to put themselves on the frontlines? I cannot stop taking inventory of the people in my life who need support. How do I help in a time when we cannot be in the same room with one another?
Compassion, in and of itself, is of God and I believe it is what holds together community. We cannot love without empathy for what someone else is going through. Yet when there is so much coming at us and we are revved up for a sustained period of time, there can be another side to compassion that can leave us feeling bleak and dark and false. It comes from holding what is not ours to hold. The term compassion fatigue is defined as stress resulting from helping or wanting to help people who are experiencing trauma or suffering.
The problem is at some level we are all experiencing trauma in this new reality. For me it is when I feel my body tighten up everywhere. It is when I do the same things over and over again and expect a different result. But it's never different. And if any of us stay there long enough it becomes exhaustion and irritation with others, and then with ourselves. Instead of coming from a place of listening and being open, it becomes about us, what we are feeling and our need to be in control.
This is when we have to be reminded of presence and being present right where we are. There is not one of us who does not need a refuge right now, a safe place. And we BOTH find it in each other AND we find it in ourselves. What do others need? What do my people right in front of me need? AND what do I need? I have heard it said we already have perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, perfect joy. We only need to settle our minds so this goodness can rise from deep within us. There are ways this time is forcing us to get real with ourselves. Will we receive it? The best and most true moments I have had by far in this time have not been when I am overthinking or fearing what has happened or the unknown of what is going to happen, but when I have let the moments happen and I have been true to myself whether that be giving freely what I have to give or enjoying the fact that it’s a new day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKTwwGh8gMo.
How I see it is we are all somewhere on the continuum between floodgates open and floodgates blocked. What if we acknowledge where we are and try to move in the opposite direction? If you are flooded, pull back and give yourself what you need and be softer. If you are blocked, move in the direction of someone else and remember this is about all of us. BOTH bring connection and if there is anything we truly need right now it is connection.
