Respond with Compassion
If you’re raised without mercy, you never learn how to be merciful. Let me rephrase that. You learn to swim in a similar manner. There is one camp that shows you how water can be a friend, immersing you gently, following your lead, available and aware, lest any fear rise up in you.
There is another camp, which throws you in the deep end and walks away, as you flail and scream, panicked for your life. No one jumps in to save you. The message is quite clear: swim or die.
As a survivor (graduate) of the heartless mercy school, I’ll tell you this: If I can help in any way, I will and I must. To see someone struggling and do nothing is unconscionable to me. Love jumps in the pool to drag the drowner to safety. No lectures, parables, rhetoric. Love responds with compassion, because that’s what Love does.
LBM 6/12/2023
