Feeling Philosophical: Compassion & Understanding

I met Lou Ann Duffy while I was a nineteen-year-old college sophomore. Like some kind of freaky foreshadowing, Lou Ann had recently been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) while I was at the prime of my health. We attended the same Catholic university, lived in the same dorm and both of our boyfriends were in rock ‘n roll bands out of town, which meant we both left town each weekend. We became friends as a result of all we had in common, but our similarities ceased at gym class. While I did high-kicking aerobics with the rest of the class, she marched in place. While we ran, she did small range-of-motion exercises. We KICKED-two-three-four! She streeeeetched.

I remember talking with her late into the night, a conversation during which she tried to describe RA to me. I thought, “What a whiner. You look fine. Suck it up.” Early RA is cruel. It gives you invisible, debilitating symptoms while leaving you looking outwardly as healthy as ever. I transferred to a different college before I developed RA myself and lost touch with Lou Ann. She never knew I became sick.

Everyone who goes through chronic, difficult circumstances asks the same question at some low point: Why me?... I don’t have the answer to that question. But I do have twenty years of hindsight that have taught me to view life more as “cause and effect” than as “why or why not?” I don’t know why your child became ill or why her husband died. I don’t know why I have RA. But I can see the effect those circumstances have had on people. I have seen people become bitter. I have watched others blossom with faith. Still others ride a rollercoaster down to despair and back up to faith over and over again. Personally, I’ve experienced all those effects...and more. Today, my mind has wandered a crooked line straight to compassion and understanding.

In hindsight, my early twenties were the perfect years for my personal life lesson of compassion and understanding. I was old enough to have done lots of playing: playing the piano, playing tennis, playing college intramural sports. But I was also old enough to have developed opinions and judgments. The homeless needed to work harder. People with messy yards were apathetic. Untidy homes equaled laziness. If you were sick, you hadn’t taken satisfactory care of yourself. Overweight people just needed to push away from the table sooner. I had your basic bootstrap mentality: everyone needed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Those memories of the twenty-something Angela clarify the evolution of my compassion and understanding. Now when I hear that someone has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or any other invisible, but painful disease, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Twenty-something Angela would have been skeptical, just as I was with Lou Ann. When another friend, who also has RA, arrives at church with greasy hair and a wrinkled skirt, I realize she must be having a particularly painful morning (try scrubbing through hair with knuckles that feel like fire). Twenty-something Angela would have judgmentally been aghast. When I haven’t heard from a friend in an unusually long time, I now wonder if they are experiencing difficulties. Twenty-something Angela would have taken it personally.

Recently I spent time with an acquaintance who is especially concerned about appearances. In the last decade she has commented that my moustache has gotten too dark, that my brows need waxed, that I needed to hold my stomach in, that my bed needed made...you get the idea. This particular acquaintance definitely does not know how it feels to make the decision of whether or not to shower for the day based on how exhausted one feels after showering.

After spending WAY too much time feeling hurt (boo hoo) by her latest remarks, I finally asked myself, “Why do I care so much? Why am I expending so much mental energy on such trivial issues?” Especially when I know this person is not spiteful or mean-spirited and probably sincerely believes she is doing me a favor.

Compassion and understanding. My acquaintance is extremely healthy, her children are healthy, she is financially successful, she always looks terrific—on purpose. Her biggest complaint is that her family is too busy, a complaint that she prefaces with, “I really don’t have room to complain, but...” She knows her life is good. I would have it no other way. However, compassion and understanding are muscles that are built on the weight benches of trials and hardship, unless one builds them through intentional practice. She and I haven’t been using the same weights, so her statements seem to stem from judgment.

I sound like I’m tooting my own horn. I hope not. I see the speck in my eye as I look at what I perceive as the timber in hers. My argument against her is inherently flawed: I claim compassion while not really knowing and having compassion for the difficulties she probably is silently experiencing in a world completely outside of my own...her own “weights.”

So, for everyone going through something difficult...and that would be just about everyone...allow your difficulties to create compassion and understanding. You will probably never know "why"--the cause for your challenging circumstances--but you can decide the effect. My acquaintance is beautiful on the outside. But I am so much more thankful for--so much more aware of--the beauty of friends and family that reaches out from the inside.