How to Stay Open
Without Losing Your Mind to Suffering
Dear Death,
I see so much misery around me even if I live in a wealthy neighborhood (Montreal, Quebec, Canada French speaking but hopefully bilingual enough that I can write to you). I don’t know what to do about all the poverty and need I see. I give money to charities and individuals but I never know if it will help.
Sometimes I see what looks like scams. A recent example while I was waiting for someone running errands: a man was driving a brand new Mercedes and dropped what looked like his wife and 3 daughters so they could beg for money. The women looked desperate and really worked hard. An hour or so after, he picked them up and he yelled at them. The language was foreign but it sounded like he was mad at the collected amount.
I did volunteer work in the past but it did not bring me any joy, just guilt and despair, like putting bandaids on broken bones. So what can I do to feel helpful without feeling so down from what I see when I try to help.
Sincerely,
Blue Montreal
Dear Blue Montreal,
You excel at the art of noticing and careful observation. Not a lot of people would have noticed that heartwrenching story you saw unfold. Walking through the world and being able to see what is happening around you with subtlety and detail is a kind of mindfulness and meditation that can serve you in a thousand ways. This eye for telling details can open up realms of wonder and awe for you that others might miss.
But when your eyes are open and you aren’t blocking what’s around you, one of the things you are sure to notice is that the world is full of suffering, desperation and death.. There is no wealthy neighborhood nor gated community that has ever succeeded in keeping suffering outside its borders.
I have three tools you can try to keep going through the world with the gift of noticing and not shutting down in the face of suffering as is so common.
Interrupt Empathy, Nurture Compassion
This tool comes from an insight in the Buddhist tradition. The thing about empathy, defined as feeling the sorrows of others, is it doubles suffering. Likely it was empathy that made your experience of doing volunteer work too difficult to continue. Rather than alleviating the suffering you saw, you doubled it by taking on what you saw and replicating an echo of it in yourself.
Interrupting empathy will take discipline. Every time you notice yourself taking on the suffering of other people, interrupt the imagination that puts you in their shoes with compassion.
Compassion in this tradition is the cultivation of kindness. You can interrupt the empathy with wishing people well. In your mind’s ear, say I wish this person relief, I wish this person health, I wish this person joy. Then let them go.
Understand that trying to replicate their sorrow in yourself does this person no good and only hurts you. As you practice interrupting empathy with well wishes and kind thoughts you can start leveling up to kind acts. When appropriate to your own judgment you can do an act of charity or see a helpful thing you can do and follow through.
You may find that acts inspired by compassion are more helpful and less likely to do harm than those inspired by empathy. I’ve talked about this tool in the Ask Death column before but I think it will be an especially helpful tool for you to try.
Share Joy
If you have the capacity to create sorrow and pain in yourself by watching others you also have the ability to share in the joys of others. And sharing in the joys of others is a healthier habit.
The world is full of suffering and desperation but it also has tremendous joys at the same time. Too much tuning into the former can habituate you to always focus on the sorrow and skipping over the beauty of life.
So start cultivating your noticing toward joy. Tune in with it when you see joy. Allow your imagination to step into the shoes of the joys of the people around you. There is no harm in doubling the joys you notice in the world within yourself.
The process is the same. First notice the joy you see. Then with the same power of imagination that creates the difficult feeling of sorrow, create a mirrored feeling of joy.
With practice, you may notice that even the people you used to be in the habit of pitying have their share of joy too. You were just focused on the sorrow. But just as much as suffering is all around you, so is joy and beauty and love. Start looking for it and consciously sharing it to create balance in that keen eye for detail.
Gifts of Noticing
Awe and wonder are great gifts in the human experience. If you have a strength in observation and noticing, you have the capacity to share this gift with others.
A lot of the great writers, artists and scientists had this gift. By finding a practice to hone the detail of what they could notice, they were also able to share truths and insights about being alive in this world.
You may have a lot of natural empathy that will make volunteering at a homeless shelter always too difficult. But there are other gifts you can give the world. Find a way to use those powers of observation to help people see the world with the detail and wonder that you can.
Death is coming for everyone. One thing you can do in this life is to witness the world while you are still here. You can witness the beauty, the hidden stories, the details and life will become richer for being seen.
A book or a painting with the right telling detail can be treasured for generations. Find a way to use your gift.
The Croak Section
Ask Death a Question! You just might get a tool or an idea that makes one day of your life a little more full of joy. Send your questions to askdeath@wecroak.com
Work with me. Build a life with more joy, more accomplishment and more meaning. You have the capacity to love your life. www.tidepathcoach.com
Hansa