Generally, I am an idealist not a ‘realist’ [as in ‘wait until you get into the real world’]. Generally, I see the best in others; I see their potential for greatness. Generally, I believe in the goodness of others and hence trust that others are trying to live a ‘good life’ and that others act rooted in good faith. Generally, I believe that abundance reigns, not scarcity [in that there is enough to go around if we are ALL willing to share]. Generally, I believe in high achievement more than in competition [my experience is that high achievers are rooted in an abundance mentality]. This brief ‘context setting’ brings us to our topic for today.
Generally, I think that if we were to take a critical look at ourselves we would recognize that competition not compassion is one of our main motivators as we journey through life. Look around, as a culture we find ourselves deeply immersed in all sorts of competition. It seems as if our whole sense of self is dependent upon the way we compare ourselves with others and upon the differences we can identify [as an aside, when we stress and focus on ‘differences’ there are but a few steps to then being able to guilt-free harm others]. For many of us, when asked, ‘Who are you?’ our response is ‘I am the difference I make.’ It is by our differences/distinctions, that we are recognized, honored, rejected, or despised. Whether I am more or less smart, practical, strong, useful or handsome/beautiful depends upon those with whom I am compared or those with whom I compete. It is upon these positive or negative distinctions that much of my self-esteem depends (this is also true when it comes to relationships, teams, families, organizations, etc). If I stop and step-back and reflect I soon begin to realize that many family problems, race/ethnic conflicts, class confrontations, religious-based ‘wars’ [the wars religions fight for our souls, for example], disputes that occur at the local, regional, state, societal and global levels – whether real or imagined – play a central role in all of this. One consequence (partly intended and partly unintended) is that we define ourselves in ways that require us to maintain distance from one another [physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual distance]. We also become ‘protective’ and ‘defensive’ in order to maintain our differences. After all, who are we if we cannot proudly point to something special that sets us apart from you?
This type of competition seems rampant today and prevents us from entering into full community/solidarity with one another – it is a major block to compassion [it is also a major tap root for ‘fear’ and high anxiety]. Compassion requires connection and connection requires relationship and relationship requires trust rooted in deep caring. I-You-We might have to give up our identity rooted in differences and replace it with an identity rooted in commonness – the tough stuff, as most of us know, is in the giving up or the letting go. Being compassionate requires us to be disturbed and moved in/by love; competition, for example, requires us to be disturbed and moved in/by fear.
This fear, which is very real even though it might not be rooted in the ‘real world,’ influences our thinking, our choices and our behavior; it betrays our deepest illusions: that our race, church, society, team, family, organization is NOT LIKE yours; our pride in who we are has morphed into arrogance and fear. It is easy for us then to cling to our differences and defend them at all costs – our loss of compassion, via connection leads us far too often to being able to guilt-free engage in ‘violence’ upon the other [sometimes we say this ‘violence’ is for your own good – the Grand Inquisitor, for example, could guilt-free inflict great pain on the person in order to get the person to convert for the pain experienced now will not compare with the pain of everlasting damnation – ‘I am saving your soul, my son/daughter.’]. How about if we switch this a bit: COMPASSION – NOT COMPETITION? A bit disturbing isn’t it?
Searcher-Seeker 