Co-passion, passion together, really amounts to shared feeling. Compassion is when you can honestly say “I’ve been there, man”, or “beautiful lady I feel what you are saying”.
And if this is true, how can you develop broad compassion except through pain, mistake, failure, and disgrace? I don’t think you can.
Me, I’m fuckup a’plenty that I can relate to nearly everyone. And as I have no doubt commented often, I find myself listening to people’s stories continually. If I hire people for something, it is very rare I don’t spend 10 minutes twice a week listening to long stories from their past.
People need touch, physically. I’m listening to Jordan Peterson’s excellent course on Personality, and he points out that hugs literally release pain relieving hormones in the body. You are literally, in effect, offering a pain relieving drug when you touch someone.
But we need EMOTIONAL touch too, “feeling felt”–to use the excellent phrase I will continue to point out was seemingly coined by Dan Siegel (I hope that is right!!!)–and that is feeling HEARD.
And most Americans suffer from a lack both of physical and emotional touch.
And I think lacking both makes all of us stupid. It makes life insipid, plastic, stainless cleanable steel. Gray. Sterile. Safe and utterly lifeless.
So I suppose it is small wonder people who cannot touch THEMSELVES emotionally, who do not really know what they are feeling most of the time, not least because they were not helped in their youth by parents and other care givers willing to take the time to mirror emotions with them, cannot honestly feel others, which means they cannot feel honest compassion.
And they sense this lack, on some level. This is how kindness–which can easily be enacted as a sentimental, external ritual filled with self satisfaction but no true understanding of the Other–becomes a blind value. Compassion and “empathy” likewise. They know they are missing something, and they very much want it, but they don’t really know what it is, so they hollow out the words and turn them into stakes they attempt to drive into the hearts of people unwilling to share their ritual with them.
I think this is close to the truth of our time. How else to explain the seemingly nice people who grow fangs the moment you disagree with one of their assumptions?
I’ve commented on this from time to time. I like hippy shops, the organic places, the quirky fun little stores. But I KNOW most of them would frown intensely and never get warm if I wore a MAGA hat into their stores. This is regrettable to me. A large swathe of humanity with whom I would otherwise have much in common is lost to me. This bothers me, and I continue to work to explain it.
Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of things. I’ve been processing some really horrific, very dark, highly unpleasant things lately. I will continue to feel gratitude that my constitution and mind are strong.
I may have some larger comments on Life to make soon; or maybe not. I don’t know. I do have a long list of “notes” on my phone I will likely post in the next week or two.