EPISODE SEVEN; IN WHICH THE PLOT MAKES AN APPEARANCE AND COMPASSION IS CONTEMPLATED

Welcome to my blog which purports to be the weeklyish update on the (extremely belated) ecloding of the literary career of a writer otherwise bereft both of income stream and job satisfaction. Think of it as a particularly extreme form of Springwatch.

Today I have news of the plot. Something happened to the writer!

He, I, noticed an ad on Gumtree for submissions to a publisher. Fiction or non-fiction. Whole works, bits of work. Presumably anyone with knowledge of the industry would know that someone is about to be flooded with uncountable wordage, shed loads of shit, and a permanent migraine. Or maybe they would smell a rat. 

Or maybe they would be so desperate they would join the queue anyway, just in case.

So I sent off my favourite novel and my period piece Pilgrimage to India 1976. To my amazement I received an email back two days later from the publisher saying how much he enjoyed the work and that it was the most compelling read he had received. And that as soon as I’d finished it he would like to publish it as an ebook.

Finished it? I only then did I notice the title he was referring to, a piece of writing I hadn’t meant to send him. It was the first, only, 15,000 words of a novel that I began last year and then put aside because I had a lot of doing nothing that I wanted to catch up on. Of course I was so excited by this response that I had to spend a couple of days lying down on my bed and staring at the ceiling until I calmed down.

Then I was contacted by a Right-to-die group who wanted to say they’d read an article of mine on the subject which they found ‘balanced, interesting, and helpful’. It all goes to show there’s a discerning public out there.

Doesn’t it?

On Compassion

In my self- appointed role as a very occasional Social Activist, I have spoken up for the health care model developed by Professor Allan Kellehear which he calls ‘Compassionate Cities.’  My support has been reasoned, meaning that I follow his argument and agree with the need, rather than zealous, which I think would have to involve some degree of belief that his vision is achievable. My assumption that this is not the case has been based on two counts:

1.     1.  That people aren’t compassionate

2.   2.    Communities no longer exist.

It’s been a lifelong tendency of mine to observe my own smallnesses and selfishness and then to presume others are the same and that if you scratch hard enough you’ll always find the inner bastard. My compassion tends to be self-indulgent and emotional, arising most often in the privacy of my own room while I’m listening to melancholic music and whimsying on the struggles of mankind in the face of terrible mystery and on how sweet every act of goodness and hope is. Then I cry. Then someone knocks on the door and I hide in case they want to do something I don’t feel like doing.

Like giving them time and attention.

Luckily, we’re not all the same. These last few days I saw my partner helping an old friend of mine who is ill. She didn’t have to do it and didn’t do it out of duty. I watched her do it and marvelled at this altruistic quality that can exists in us that we call compassion.

Rather than do anything helpful I then decided to contemplate compassion.

I looked it up in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary: ‘Suffering together with another; fellow-feeling. Pity that inclines one to spare or succour.’ 

And asked the Professor who gives a range of definitions but emphasises the mutuality, the co-ness, the ‘sharing with another’s suffering: to be patient in another’s suffering, to bear and support suffering.’

While I was scroogling for definitions I was initially surprised to come across a ‘you can have too much compassion’ brigade of articles written mainly by psychotherapists suffering from burn-out but also by women’s groups saying that their surfeit of compassion made them weak, and contemptible, in the eyes of men.

So can compassion be bad for you? Or is it something alongside the compassion? I’m not sure I’m keen on all that suffering and can’t really see the point of us suffering together. On the whole I’d opt for at least one of us not suffering and that one doing what they could to help the other out.

How then to stop compassion harming you? Inevitably I turn to the Buddha Wikipedia:

 Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed.

 

At the same time, it is emphasised that in order to manifest effective compassion for others it is first of all necessary to be able to experience and fully appreciate one's own suffering and to have, as a consequence, compassion for oneself. The Buddha is reported to have said, "It is possible to travel the whole world in search of one who is more worthy of compassion than oneself. No such person can be found.

Although religions often like to claim their gods as compassionate, I cannot for a moment agree, whereas humans for no good reason, against all the odds, occasionally are amazing. We are, obviously, greater than the gods we create. 

Should you wish to experience Compassion, which is an antidote to anger, try the following exercise from the Resurfacing Section of Harry Palmer’s Avatar Course. Apply it to Petty Tyrants (cf last week) and to aspects of yourself.  

Or don’t.

The Compassion Exercise

Honesty with one's self leads to compassion for others.

OBJECTIVE: To increase the amount of compassion in the world.

EXPECTED RESULTS: A personal sense of peace.

INSTRUCTIONS: This exercise can be done anywhere that people congregate (airports, malls, parks, beaches, etc.). It should be done on strangers, unobtrusively, from some distance. Try to do all five steps on the same person.

Step 1: With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is seeking some happiness for his/her life."

Step 2 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life."

Step 3 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair."

Step 4 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is seeking to fulfil his/her needs."

Step 5 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is learning about life."