(Maria and Gus)
I’ve often wondered in the past few years why it is that some people are able to show mercy to people in need and others are not. The cruelty and indifference I sometimes see online and in our political dialogues is sometimes hard to bear.
A friend of mine is a devout Christian and he struggles to make sense of the news.”I am a Christian,” he says. “I welcome people, I care for people, I reach out to the needy and the vulnerable. That is what a Christian does.”
Maybe, I said, that’s what some Christians do, but it is not what all Christians or many people do, including so many of our political representatives.
I got a message today about old people. Mercy is not in fashion in our time.
The sender was complaining that old people – like the ones fighting for their flowers and birds in Virginia – “are always complaining, they are lucky if you look at how old people throughout the world have to live. These people in Virginia have shelter and food and nice houses and apartments to live in. Why don’t they stop whining and give thanks for what they have?”
I wondered why I had so much empathy for them, and he had so little. Was there something off about me? And why do I have trouble showing mercy for the merciless?
Don’t the people who don’t know mercy and can’t feel it need it more than anyone? Are we only merciful to the nice?
A few months ago, a local woman jeered at me on her Facebook Page wondering why I was always raising money for the older people in the Mansion. “Why doesn’t he use his own money?,” she asked about me. “Why should I give him mine?
The only thing I could think of to say was I don’t have much money.
Why, I wonder, do so many people intuitively feel mercy for people. Where does it come from?
I thought about it, and I felt foolish that I didn’t see it sooner. I sometimes see the world upside down, perhaps that’s a part of my Dyslexia.
I realize that mercy is felt only by the people who have needed it.
Put another way, only the man or woman who has suffered despair and helplessness is absolutely certain that people might need or deserve mercy. It depends so much about what has happened to us and shaped us.
It is better to find God or awakening on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency [and obliviousness] that has never felt a need for forgiveness. I have needed forgiveness so often and felt despair so frequently that it is natural for me to feel it for others.
It has been said that I feel too much of it, and that was not a compliment.
I have learned that a life without problems is not a perfect life, or a compassionate life. I have never wanted a perfect life, nothing could seem more shallow and empty to me. A life without problems has always seemed to me to be far more hopeless than one that has experienced disappointment and despair.
I have always learned more from the dark side than the bright.
Even though people with real problems are excluded from running for public office and succeeding, (no mistakes are allowed in our unforgiving process), I think people who have not known pain and despair should be the ones excluded from public life. How could they understand mercy or preach it, or help the needy?
I have come to embrace the reality that I am learning to live for others, not just for myself. This is not a selfless or noble position. Living for others means that I can face and accept my own limitations and faults and mistakes. My own many deficiencies torture me less and less.
Nothing can be said about me that I have no said about myself, I have no secrets, I am free. Like Beavis and Butthead, because I am stupid I am free. Because I never learned how to think, I can think.
When I live more and more for others, I realize that I don’t need to be perfect, I don’t need to be a saint, I can accept the unacceptable parts of me. It is like removing a 500 pound rock off of my shoulders, and a weight off of my soul.
It is because of these broken pieces and flaws that I need others, and that others need me.
I am a broken piece of a puzzle and I compliment and supplement the other broken pieces of the puzzle, we are all flawed in different ways, but we are flawed, each one making up in him and herself for the other.
I think that awakening is where mercy comes from. I am no better than anyone, and no one is better than me.
“Put another way, only the man or woman who has suffered despair and helplessness is absolutely certain that people might need or deserve mercy. It depends so much about what has happened to us and shaped us.”
Hear, hear, Jon. You are so right!
Is mercy felt by those who have needed it, or by those who have received it? I am thinking of the large group of voters who articulated feelings of being ignored, and left behind in a global economy, and responded by cheering children in cages and families torn apart. The or narrative of loss seems to imply they need our mercy; their response of “fear aggression” suggests they’ve never received or accepted it.
Speaking of the broken puzzle pieces reminds me of the Leonard Cohen song that says “the cracks are how the light comes in.” Also, during a painful time I was in, I came across the comforting idea that the ancient Chinese (or Japanese) would mend broken pottery pieces with molten gold–to make them more precious? to remind themselves of the value of being broken? So, some of the merciless are living in privilege and don’t realize how privileged they truly are, and some are like Jeanne Blue (above) in that “their response to ‘fear aggression’ suggests they’ve never received or accepted it.” I have often worried about the divisions in our country and the reasons for the lack of compassion that I see in some areas. So many people in my red state say that “those poor should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps (just like I did)” and don’t recognize that the poor don’t even have the boots that their critics have. Also, the middle class poor seem to be trapped in a “scarcity mindset.” There’s not enough to go around for everybody. Plus, they don’t have much but they have worked hard to have it–so those poor need to get off their backsides and get a job. Anyway, the merciless cruelty of the privileged is not going to make the poor people go away.
Hi Molly, So interesting you refer to the practice of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver. I was watching an uplifting DVD documentary last night titled A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story. Dr. Habib Sadighi refers to the practice by the name, Kinsukuroi, It really caught my attention and now I see you have shard the very same thought. Thank you. Wendy
Thank you, Wendy! That practice was a comfort to me when I first encountered it! It reminded me that I will become more valuable as the result of my pain and recovery. And it’s true! Since I went on to become a college counselor at a community college, I know I had much greater empathy for the students. Life is tough sometimes but if we keep getting up, we will be better than before…ask Tiger Woods!
For me, my empathy, I believe, is innate……..I have been like this since my childhood,,,,,,an example……my brother, who was 11 months younger than I (he committed suicide 8 years ago), would get hurt in some way while playing and begin crying and I would cry right along with him……another example……my girlfriend’s grandmother passed (we were 8 years old)………I had never met her………when we got to the funeral home my dear friend began crying and I cried right along with her. My empathy, I always say, is to the extreme, sometimes emotionally debilitating, nothing, it seems that I can control, it’s just there!
I have never responded to a blog post before but I find myself replaying the woman’s comment about “why should she give her own money”. I have 2 responses:
Firstly, there is no “rational” reason why she should give her money. Generosity and empathy are spiritual impulses which arise from the heart and if you are dead to those voices then you do not have it.
Secondly, by opening the work you do to allow a wider participation you are giving a gift to the many people who do feel that impulse but may be confused about a meaningful way to contribute to the work of creating a better world. So thank you for creating that possibility. In my mind better that the multitude of charitable institutions that take such a large cut off the top for “administrative” fees.