Qualities of True Compassion

This is another writing assignment done a couple of years ago exploring what compassion means to me.  After rereading it more recently I've wondered again about the true meaning of it and how we each show it to one another and, most importantly and often forgotten, to ourselves.  

True Compassion: The Pinocchio Experience

I think compassion is a quality that is both taught and experienced; changing with time, age and self. When I was a child, like most little girls, I was expected to play with dolls, a metaphor for life and self if ever there was one. Now, some of my first dolls that I remember my aunt gave to me. A Raggedy Ann and Andy set of dolls that had cute gingham clothes that came off of them so you could learn to tie the bow of the apron or zip the zipper or button the buttons on them, very educational and fun, kinda like her. And, if you took off all of their clothes, they had a perfect red heart where there heart was supposed to be. For some reason that was the coolest thing, their maker giving these dolls a heart, something only a real girl or boy would have. I think these were some of my favorite toys that were ever given to me as a child. My aunt always did seem to know what I’d like. Even with cut off yarn hair and colored on fabric skin, I loved those dolls unconditionally. But, like many things, they got lost in the shuffle of growing up and moving to and fro and were lost, first Andy and then Ann.

My Grandmother gave me the next doll I remember well, a baby doll that I kept at her house. A simple, soft and cuddly one that came in swaddling and drank from ever emptying and replenishing baby bottles. No bells or whistles came with this baby doll, but the bottles were cool and my grandma even gave me a dress for it she bought at the church bazaar. It was an ugly bright green hand knitted thing that smelled like Tupperware. I both loved and hated that doll because it reminded me of my grandma, with her seemingly ever replenishing cookie jar and soft cuddliness mixed with a home spun, kitsch flair, but in a baby doll form. Sadly, by this age, I could never get passed the dress.

But the doll that affected me the most was one my mother gave to me. I think I was five or six when my mother bought for me the latest thing, the most expensive baby doll that both walked and talked. The ultimate Christmas present if ever there should have been. No mothering necessary for this hard plastic, batteries not included, not so cuddly baby doll. Just stand her up and watch her go according to the shiny, new packaging. So, after supplying her with batteries we went to try her out. My mother seemed so proud of this gift and I had high hopes because it seemed to make her so happy. I always wondered if it was the fact that the doll was supposed to be self sufficient and already came pre-trained that that was what my mother loved about this gift or if it was the fact that it cost a lot and was popular that made her think it was going to be perfect for me.

After setting the baby doll down on the floor and turning her on, she would take a couple of wobbly steps with her arms outstretched and then a hollow sounding recorded, “Mamma,” would be uttered from her non-moving lips. Perfect, in my mother’s eyes until, ironically, after those first couple of steps, my mother’s doll would inevitably fall down but creepily keep moving her legs, crying for “Mamma” never knowing or understanding that she’d fallen. After it did that time after time my mother was so frustrated, she ended up taking it back to the store and getting a refund. I remember feeling sad for that broken doll, never able to walk without falling. I think that was the first time I remember feeling compassion so strongly for something, first for the doll who would always stumble and not be able to pick herself up again, and then for my mother who seemed so upset and embarrassed that her shiny new gift for me just wouldn't work like it was supposed to. That experience changed me somehow in both scary and lovely ways. After that, I never looked at dolls the same way again.

As for myself, after saving up my money from birthday cards and Christmas checks, I bought myself what I thought was the creme de la creme of girly dolls: a Barbie. A fully grown up, completely independent doll that had tons of accessories and her own car and penthouse to boot (all sold separately of course). I loved my Barbie, with her long hair and perfect smile. You’d think that a brand new doll with tons of accessories would make me happy, and it did for a long time. But, after a while, ironically it wasn't the fancy newer Barbies that held their sway with me, it was the broken ones that I liked the most.

My Barbies, and I had a few of them, were as abused and tortured as any child’s dolls that are truly loved. They were the subject of hair cutting experiments (I swear I was just trying to give her the Sabrina bob off of Charlie’s Angels), broken chewed on legs (the result of misplaced kitty aggression), dislocated arms (an experiment to see how she was put together), and random tattoos of permanent markers and pens (I was bored and thought new makeup would do her some good). But instead of abandoning these broken dolls for new ones, I think my previous experience with the baby doll who couldn't walk changed my view and priorities on the subject. I felt sorry for them so I would try to fix them, help them. Or, maybe, I just felt guilty for having broken them in the first place, I don’t know.

My first acts of true compassion as a child may have been towards these inanimate, pathetic creatures of imagination. I bought an accessory pack that had both wigs and boots in it so as to fix the balding Barbie as well as the Barbie with the chomped on leg (it’s amazing what a pair of knee high boots will cover up and help with). I traded some shoes and an outfit for an arm from a friend who wasn't as in to “saving” her Barbies and had a completely ravaged one but with the correct arm still intact. You could tell I already had aspirations of being a doctor by this point because of the elaborate “operation” I held for her. The fact that the arm was a little off in color was inconsequential and was gotten around the same way I got around the permanent markers and pen marks. I made them superheroes by stealing my mother’s old eye makeup and completely coloring them blue as though they weren't human, but some half alien being turned super hero that made looking weird and exotic okay. It was an imaginative solution to a problem that I think was more in my head than in reality. But that was how I dealt with life back then, if it wasn't perfect looking, fake it or come up with some other plausible explanation as to why it was just as good if not better than the norm.

I thought I was being compassionate for these poor, abused, sometimes neglected dolls. And at that stage of life, I think I was. I didn't expect anything back from them, so I wasn't looking for something in return other than toys to play with once more. I used this line of reasoning later in life as well. If someone was hurt, I’d help them. If someone was being made fun of or yelled at, I’d stand up for them. To be honest, in part, I did this because I thought I might get something out of it, whether it was a new friend or just to feel better about myself, but ultimately I don’t know if I always thought about it at all. I just did it, because that was the right thing to do. I was much better at being compassionate with others rather than myself. So much so, I think my friendships have always seemed to be filled with characters from the island of misfit toys rather than seemingly normal people, and I still the unlucky reindeer who never had a redeemable nose to work with. I never tried to change my friends, just to help them when they needed it. If only I could have been that compassionate with myself.

I think, growing up, I tried so hard to not think about what I was going through, I became one of my own dolls, always “fixed” to look okay or seem better or unbroken. To some extent, I've still kept that unfortunate practice going to this day. Not all of us should be the tortured Pinocchio, striving to be “real” boys and girls, sometimes being who we are, doll or not is okay, too.

Until well into adulthood, never did it cross my mind that the ultimate form of compassion I could have had for my broken dolls, or for myself, was acceptance, and that by trying to fix them, I was actually doing them a disservice, and limiting them and myself to a set of standards that could never be met. Nor should I have assumed that anything should, could or would be gained or lost by my actions. Just that the act itself is the point, nothing more and nothing less. That connection between without conditions is sometimes all that is needed for true compassion. Now, that doesn't mean that if I see a doll that is broken or fallen, I shouldn't help it, it just means I should do so without expectation or without preconceived notions about what is broken and what is fixed. And that sometimes the best thing I can do for a “broken” doll is to just let it be broken, because what is “broken” is okay, too.

I Am Divine

Goddess In Violet
by Sherry Lore

It's been a while since I posted anything. I kind of lost my self and my sense of hope... Pandora's box open and empty for a while. So,I thought I'd try again, mostly for my current self, a little bit for the lost part of me, trying to find my way back from the empty box.

The Following essay came from a discussion I had a few year ago after a long session of therapy. After talking about feeling lost even after being in my new home for years, I found that I wasn't just physically and emotionally lost, I was spiritually lost as well. So, in response, my therapist asked me to write about what divinity was to me.  

As is in my nature, I took what was supposed to be a simple assignment of a paragraph or two about what I thought divinity was and made it into something more akin to a map. Perhaps I could find some clue as to where to go if I figured out where I'd been. A fortune cookie if ever I heard one.

The Divine Within

I’m not sure what specifically makes me, or any other, divine.  This has always been a tough concept for me.  My scientific mind trying to reconcile with my spiritual soul has been a difficult thing.  We are all made up of atoms, which combine to make proteins, which string together to make up DNA, which is the blueprint for our being.  This I know and understand.  How those atoms came together, becoming proteins and DNA and eventually us, or me, is quite another.  That speaks of something divine...  

Now, here’s where it all gets fuzzy for me.  My search for the divine has taken me many directions.  I've read parts of the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, teachings of Buddhism (everything from Theravedic to Tibetan), the Tao Te Ching, some Confucian writings and some Shinto teachings.  I've been to formal Catholic high mass to Southern Baptist fire and brimstone sermons, from Evangelical prayer circles to having at least read the pamphlet version of the good book of Mormon.  Most believed there had to be an outside source and only they had a direct connection to it.  Others believed there was no source, there was no connection there wasn't even a tangible reality and that it was either the consciousness or the journey of said consciousness that held the truth.  Okay, at least in a theoretical way I might buy that, but it still didn't take into account that intrinsic place that the Universe and the tangible held for me.  

After a while I think I felt like Goldilocks. Nothing fit, everything was either too short or tall, too hot or cold, too hard or soft and with something as personal as my eternal soul or whether or not I even had one I was looking for just right.  

And then came Wicca, which came closest to just right for a long time. There was both masculine and feminine power, there was nature and it was both without and within.  But in some ways it wasn't enough, or maybe it was too much, I don’t know.  I think after a few years when my concept of God and Goddess, Lord and Lady became more and more abstract and my idea of magic dealt less with will and power of my own energies over or with permission of  the external energies of the rest of the universe and more with the interconnection of all, I became disillusioned with all forms of formal, or at least semi-formal, religion.  So, I decided that my subscribing to a specific form had done me a disservice.  What I had been truly seeking all along was my own spirit.  A spirituality without definition, without limits, without rules and without dogma, but with full blessing and permission from the only thing I had left:  me.  

I give myself permission to be divine, not limiting myself by other people’s dogma and to create an ever changing and evolving version of my own spirituality. So far I have a hand full of truths to hold on to...  A truth that because everything in the universe is made up of energy, atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons and so forth... the Universe’s building blocks... and it all shares and interacts with each other, giving and taking pieces of itself on a regular basis, a giant cosmic dance that creates all, and we are all a part of this dance, we are all, thus, divine.

Another truth, or natural law in this case, is that everything I do affects everything around me and vice versa. Cause and effect in both a physical reality and spirituality.  What we put out comes back to us. Now, the degree to which this truth is true, is subject to debate.  In Wicca it is threefold, in Hindi and Buddhism (and a few others) it’s a karmic law that is dependent on outside sources or inside sources and has a lot of quid pro quos to it, dependent on repayment of said actions either in this life or the next.   For Wiccans it’s sometimes a literal threefold concept or can be a theoretical threefold, i.e. mind, body and spirit concept (this one is closest for me).  For other traditions there are various texts and/or God(s) involved and it all goes back to someone else having said it is this way or that way and that’s the way it is, which comes into direct conflict with my final truth... there is no absolute truth.  Just when I think I have it figured out, something new comes about to change my view.  Some call this evolution, others call this the path to enlightenment.  I call it just another step in the dance of the universe or maybe just a misstep depending on my daily view.  A constantly changing, ever evolving view of reality that sometimes takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque.   

What/who came up with the specific blueprint for the Universe itself or whether there even is a specific blueprint, I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to. Some mysteries are better left that way or would be lost, as much of religion seems to be, in translation.   But that doesn't mean I’m separate from it or that IT isn't as much a part of me as I am a part of the whole.  Thus, I am divine.