Good Friday evening, my friends. I hope your week ended on a high note today.
Here’s a proposition for you. Let compassion be your compass. Let compassion be your passion.
These two phrases embody a life lived with compassion rather than anger. In this recording, you hear a series of encouragements for more compassion in the world followed by a series of compassion affirmations.
There are few things the world and each of us need more of than compassion. Like all the hard stuff, it must begin with us. If not us, then who?
Stay passionate and compassionate in your life this weekend!
So many other emotions and impulses can so easily become our “true north.”
I’ve always felt compassion is a noble aspiration. It brings together love and empathy.
It requires us to temper the pompousness of our hot takes with an understanding of who we really are – both us and the person on the other end of our actions and words.
It calls on us to see our flaws and our greatness and the same in the other person. It asks us to stand their shoes and see their perspective for a moment.
It puts to rest the idea that there’s one privileged way of seeing the world and opens us to the possibility there as many ways to see it as there are people.
Our consciousness encompasses the reality that our perspective is sacred, but no more so than someone else’s.
Despite the vast commonalities of the human experience – commonalities we can and must draw upon to solve many of our problems – compassion brings us to an undeniable truth.
It’s possible to be someone who works alone on a tractor all day on thousands of acres and has a life experience that leads to you to certain, very valid conclusions about life.
It’s equally possible to be someone who lives in a big city, rides the subway or sits in traffic, has people “on top” of you all day, and has a life experience that leads you to equally certain, equally valid conclusions about life.
Compassion is understanding that process and seeing those different roads as not a threat, but a natural outcome of different people and different experiences leading to different conclusions. It’s embracing that and being big enough to encompass it all without anger, judgment, or fear.
Compassion is an ultimate expression of the concept of freedom. It goes beyond an intellectual acceptance that there are different views in life and all the way to a deep understanding that it’s supposed to be that way and it’s OK.
It asks us to grant the same grace we seek from others. That grace? It’s the grace to be accepted for who we are, for where we are on our journey, and what our unique life experiences have taught us.
When we can grant that grace as readily as we expect it, that’s compassion. We will find no solutions to the difficulties in the world nor the difficulties in ourselves without its light shining within us.
Happy Sunday, my friends. Can I ask a favor of you? Can you really focus and entertain the importance of this topic.
We live in a social media world and a real world at the moment that is crippled by toxic anger and judgment.
Compassion and empathy are the baseline emotions of an advanced civilization. If humanity is to reach its destined potential, we must establish them as our baseline. The easy anger and ready judgment that marks our culture is a step backwards for the human race.
We will never become the enlightened, spacefaring civilization we can become, if we are forever tangled with each other in circular arguments and chronic conflict.
Consider this as a new course for you personally, because that’s where this shift must begin, and for our civilization as a whole.
As you do remember how special you are and how special is every single person you encounter today. Let’s treat each other as such.
Puppies! We love them, but they sure can be rambunctious even destructive at times. They don’t take no for an answer and they take testing your patience to an art form.
Our nine-month-old weimardoodle, Harper, is no exception. She can go from the most cuddly, loving creature on the planet one moment to “devil dog” the next.
She’s a chewer and a scavenger. She’s constantly looking to get something in her mouth and if it gets our attention that much the better. She’s mauled cords, gloves, rolls of toilet paper; anything that presents an opportunity.
A puppy’s antics can annoy and even anger. Yet, five minutes after scolding Harper for something she’s cuddled up next to me and I’m telling her how much I love her.
Our ability to forgive our little friend is quick and endless. Why aren’t we better at treating other humans with so much grace?
If another human negligently destroyed your shoe or rammed into your car, you’d probably be a little miffed maybe for an hour maybe all day. The puppy does it and you’re over it and moving on.
Why don’t we apply “puppy love” to people? What if we granted loved ones and strangers alike the same level of understanding we give a puppy?
There are all kinds of reasons we could give for this differentiated behavior. A puppy’s just a puppy. They can’t help it. That guy who cut me off in traffic is an adult human being on a mission to ruin my morning.
The fact is our reaction – to the puppy and the imbecilic tweet – are both our choice. If we can choose it with the puppy, we can choose it with other human beings.
Try “puppy loving” someone the next time another person upsets you. The world and your day will be a better place.
Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you are awesome!
Something will decide you. Let it be love, compassion, and peace.
If you allow the anger and the vitriol to win, you eventually become filled with it.
If you allow “Us” vs. “Them” to triumph, we’ll wind up with an unhappy cinder of a world.
Be open to change. Be open to new ideas. It’s the way of our Universe. Nothing, nothing, stays the same forever. Stopping change is impossible. We can only hope to mold it into something more productive and that helps more people.
A really famous guy counseled to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes today. If you do, I promise, you’ll find a sympathetic figure wanting most of the same things you want. If one mile doesn’t get tou there, walk two. If you’re still angry at the person, you haven’t walked far enough.
The sky is a big place for a narrow mind and a closed heart. Let yours be opened from horizon to horizon. See with new eyes.
Yes, something will decide you. Let it be love, compassion, and peace.
Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you’re awesome!
The Affirmation Spot Blog 
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