Photo: Kelly Halpin
Recently, I came along a proverb-esque story in a book called The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield. As the story goes, I ask you to put yourself in this position.
You’re walking out of the grocery store, hands full of bags. You have everything you need for your week and are muscling your way to your car. As the automatic door opens, you pop out the door and WHAM someone runs into you and you fall to the ground spilling your groceries all over the place. Your eggs have cracked on you and your non-GMO Organic Marinara sauce that you were so excitedly prepared to use for that pasta dish tonight has plopped down precisely on your thighs. What is your immediate emotional response?
I know that I’d be pissed! Probably thinking to myself, “Watch where you’re going!” Maybe even saying that out loud. What if then when you went to give that person a “piece of your mind” you found that they were blind? They couldn’t see you coming. They were being as mindful as they could be, as mindful as their situation allowed. What is your response now?
How can I help you? Are you ok? Our emotional response turns from something of anger to something of compassion and care. When we better understand the situation someone else is in, we treat it with compassion. Same situation but our ignorance causes emotional discomfort. This goes in all situations and scenarios. We can related this to any “physical disability” but more importantly, we MUST relate this to emotional disability. It’s something we all possess; some type of emotional disability. When we are mindful of that in ourselves and in others, we can begin to go about life a little less “blind.”
I bring this up because most of our negative emotional responses, the suffering we cause ourselves, is a result of our own blindness of a situation. The suffering we experience is a result of the unknown or unaware. Most of our suffering comes not from immoral acts or wrongdoing but from blindness. When we offer compassion rather than anger, we have opened the door to happiness. Happiness in ourselves and others. :)