Category Archives: Compassion

If you want to sing out, sing out! Just do it.

June 12, 2015Compassion, PerceptionBridesmaids, Cat Stevens, Compassion, Ellen DeGeneres, Empowerment, Ignorance, Integrity, Melissa McCarthy, Perception, purposeful perception, Self Perception, SexismBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: Whatever it is by Ben Lee

As I was perusing the world of Facebook this morning I noticed video post from a recent Ellen DeGeneres interview with the ever so diverse and hilarious actress Melissa McCarthy (Think sink and Bridesmaids? I’m already laughing!). Well, the interview took place on May 20^th, so I guess that is considered pretty far behind in the world of media- but I’m just not one of those people that is always quick on the uptake with “talk show gossip”. (Insert smiley face here, if you get my meaning.)

I couldn’t resist taking a look at it. What piqued my interest was the topic and how McCarthy presented the discussion with a harsh critic. The journalist had written a review of a 2014 film that starred McCarthy last year. The film had received a lot of “challenging” attention. This particular journalist was very hard on McCarthy- and it wasn’t for the integrity of her performance. It was for her appearance.

McCarthy was affected by the critique, but instead of being rude and critical to the journalist when she was given this unique opportunity, she savored this golden apple with a little talk about perception. She turned the conversation around and asked the journalist to look at the other side of his narrow minded equation. She asked the right questions, asking him how his type of critique could potentially affect someone that he loves- like his daughter. And, it worked.

I felt like this interview was testimony to how turning stories inside out can really create major shifts in our hearts and give us the opportunity to demonstrate kindness and compassion for another’s ignorance. Sometimes we need a little helping hand to see the flip side. Not everyone will be open to it, and that’s where our acceptance can have an even greater ability to heal inner conflicts.

Before I had this little moment with the internet this morning, I was walking through my office and noticed I was wearing a shoe that was squeaking with every step. It made me laugh- because I’m always reflecting on how to walk in someone else’s shoes, much like McCarthy encouraged this journalist to do. Sometimes we just have squeaky shoes, and it takes initiative and a desire to change what is inside of us to look at the cause of our squeaky shoes. Maybe we love our squeaky shoes, but we simply have to throw them away because their appearance does not outweigh their usefulness.

Image via http://meetville.com/quotes/tag/empathy/page9

In the famous singing words of Cat Stevens,

You can make it all true. And, you can make it undo.

It’s easy. You only need to know, well if you want to sing out, sing out! If you want to be free, be free. Because there is a million things to be, you know that there are.

I’m with Cat Stevens on this one. There is nothing more powerful than the knowledge that you have a choice. You have a choice to be kind. You have a choice to see the other side. You have a choice to be free and sing out. The road may be a little squeaky while getting there, but if you take a moment to look around you, I think you’ll be surprised at how much people are trying.

Limitless? “Get Real!”

October 2, 2014Compassion, Forgiveness, Life CoachBallet, Cameron Crowe, Compassion, Death Railway, Ego, Elizabethtown, Eric Lomax, forgiveness, Free Bird, grief, Life, Limitless, peace, Perception, Phenomenon, Potential, purposeful perception, Self Perception, Stubborness, Takashi Nagase, The Railway Man, Whitley, World War IIBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: “More than Life” by Whitley on album The Submarine

There are those moments tied to places from our past that emit a certain electricity. Times where we have felt right on our game, and nothing was going to get in our way of accomplishing our “Mission Impossible.” Growing up, ballet class was not one of those places for me. There were times in ballet class when I just wanted to disappear; when I ruthlessly compared myself to the “tiny” pretty girls and made unconscious decisions about my own “potential.” But I loved to dance so much that I continued in my Marcia Sue School of Dance class off that country road behind a donut shop from the time I was a smiling naïve kindergartner to a crazy teenager in high school.

I remember one afternoon while we were stretching our teacher asked us as a group what our dream was for our future. There were lots of “classic” answers. One of my classmates that I had known for years stated the trendy answer for girls in the late 80s/early 90s, “President of the United States.” I remember thinking, “why would anyone want that job!” I still feel that way, honestly. But I digress.

To me, the idea behind our “potential” as human beings contains a lot of emotional and sexist rhetoric. Defining what our greatest potential really means is a topic that intrigues me, especially as I engage in analyzing my own root belief systems and negativity.

The Quest to Define Our Potential with the Ego

There is a lot of talk out there about our inability to acknowledge the limitless nature of our potential as human beings. There are movies about it with titles so simple, how could we question their content? Titles like, “Limitless.” Or, one of my favorites? “Phenomenon!” We place a lot of limits around ourselves regardless- and they constantly transform. Stubbornness, and the need to make someone we are angry with wrong, is probably one of the most common limits I see in my work on myself, and with others.

But recently, I saw a film that blew my mind when I least expected it. As I sat in silence after the end of this heart wrenching story about a tortured soul and their abuser, I thought to myself, “Wow, now there is a man that truly lived his greatest potential. I can only hope I can love as big as he did.” The story was based on the autobiography, The Railway Man, by Eric Lomax. Lomax was a British Army officer who was sent to a Japanese POW camp in 1942 with the surrender of Singapore and forced to participate in building the well-known “Death Railway” in Thailand.

While in the camp he was tortured for telling the truth, and although he physically survived the torture and war, his heart was tormented and in pain for most of his life. In the early 80s he fell in love and remarried a woman that loved him so deeply, she was willing to risk losing her husband to help him heal his psychological wounds. This involved confronting the darkness that he was not able to reveal, even to her.

Lomax’s closest friend and also a former POW from the same camp located the interrogator that largely participated in his psychological and physical torture. His interrogator, Takashi Nagase, was living in Thailand and as part of his own personal atonement for participating in the war, had financed a Buddhist temple and museum near the bridge at the River Kwai where he gave tours. Lomax was determined to go to Thailand and kill him, but what ended up happening is an incredible story of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Owning Our Inner Freebird!

Lomax ended up becoming good friends with Nagase, a man that lived in his head as his greatest enemy for 40 years. How is it, that something so extraordinary, can happen? This is the truth of our potential as human beings. To be able to recognize that ignorance can cause someone to act out wrongly and truly see that their ignorance was not their truth. To be able to reconcile with our enemy is the greatest gift we can give to our self, and will enable us to move beyond beliefs that keep us stationary in life. Freedom in our hearts, that “Free Bird” if you will (having visions of a papier mache bird on fire comically flying over the heads of memorial attendees in Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown here!) has the potential to take you to unimaginable heights. These heights are only determined by you, and your own purpose in life. It is up to each of us to question what brings us joy- even if that means being the “President of the United States?”

Time to Get Real

The idea of embracing our limitless potential is about getting real with ourselves. If you can’t look into the mirror and question yourself, “where am I putting up a big STOP sign in my heart,” then you will continue to experience limitations behind the inability to forgive. I do believe it exists, this limitless potential, but without one another we can’t get there. Each of us has a gift to give to the world, to one another- it just may not be what you “think” it is. Now then, let’s REALLY get real!

Bearing Witness to Your Light on the Horizon

August 20, 2014Compassion, Gratefulness, Life Coach, Reflection, Self PerceptionAladdin, Bedouin Soundclash, Celebrity, Chariots of Fire, Coldplay, Compassion, Ego, grief, Hook, Julia Roberts, Life, Mrs. Doubtfire, Peter Pan, Robin Williams, Self PerceptionBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: MountainTop by Bedouin Soundclash on Album “Light the Horizon”

Recently I found myself engaged in my annual hiking tradition of tackling a 12,600 foot mountain called Santa Fe Baldy here in New Mexico. As I was rising higher and higher in altitude up this beautiful giant that holds a special place in my heart, my inner rock star was on repeat with the song Mountain Top by Bedouin Soundclash. Over and over again the words cycled “Up on the Mountain Top!” while I grew more and more out of breath. I even ran into an older gentleman whistling Chariots of Fire (his own inner rock star was clearly on a different plane), which sounded as loud as my first Alpine speaker system in my very old college VW Rabbit because the mountains are enveloped in a profound quietude at 7:30 in the morning, but it could not overpower this punk rock motivation.

Climbing a mountain, in the isolated wilderness as nature buzzes along in sync with the sunrise for 14 miles gives you a lot of time to be alone with yourself- your mind and all its delusional perceptions. It became a metaphor for my life, as it often does, and did in the very song by Bedouin Soundclash. We are constantly moving even when we don’t want to, toward a horizon colored in disaster and joy. The sky can be mucked with clouds and thunderstorms but that horizon still exists beneath the cover. Our mind can be rattled with aggravation, depression, or anxiety- but life just keeps buzzing by and we have a choice to either go along with it, or let it push us forward kicking and screaming.

Oh, There You Are Peter

A few days after my hike, the news regarding the death of Robin Williams struck my heart as it did do many others in this world. I know that much of our planet has been writing about it, talking about it, dedicating time spots in television with some of his most memorable movies. But I can’t help but express my own sadness about his passing. I didn’t know this man, but I felt like I did. I grew up with him and his improvisational genius. His smile became a permanent fixture in my heart from the scene in Hook when he begins to remember his inner Peter Pan, his truth (Click Here to Watch!).

Life’s challenge to remember our joy can be like climbing a mountain and never reaching that beautiful view promised to you by all the hiking guide books. Yet, he helped me remember it all the time! In fact, there were times where I myself wanted to let go of this life and would lay in my bed crying, wishing that I no longer had to endure the forgetfulness that comes with being human. But I would put on Hook and remember that amidst the struggle of my mind’s demons there was something inside me that recognized itself in the people around me (even when I wanted to shoot the television when the miscast Julia Roberts came on screen as Tink- nothing against you Ms. Roberts).

I think about how his world as a celebrity must have been so strange. Always having to put on a face for people when he might have felt desperation inside his heart. It is so easy for us to play the part of someone else even when we might not want to go there. But when the cameras were on, he was so good at it! And I believe that all of us are pretty darn good at it. We’ve been programmed to forget who we are and why we are here.

Your Fantabulous Light on the Horizon

But you know what, Mr. Williams? You helped me remember- because you struggled with it yourself. You helped a lot of people remember and that was your gift to us. Over the weekend I had the unique pleasure of getting to spend a few days with my niece and nephews on the east coast. Aladdin was on, and so was Mrs. Doubtfire. I saw my niece light up with laughter at age 5 when she saw Mrs. Doubtfire’s fake boobs catch on fire while cooking for the first time. I had the opportunity to talk to her about the fantabulous joy you brought to so many people’s hearts, and will continue to bring with what you’ve left behind for us to bear witness to your soul’s gifts, the light on the horizon.

“Because You’re a sky full of stars,” brought to you by Coldplay

With all that I am, I shall continue to be inspired by you and hope that I can bring others comfort much in the way you brought it to me. Sometimes we may feel lost, but if we can just remember the Peter Pan that we truly are in what we share as human beings, we have a chance at seeing the joys of Never Never Land even when we are experiencing the life of another human being toiling away in our cubical. Your generosity can only be described as that light on the horizon that we see so often and linger in its beauty. “You are a sky full of stars.” Thank you.

How a Shooting Star Named Baby Sophia Bathed Us in Her Kindness

July 17, 2014Compassion, Gratefulness, Grief, Kindness, ReflectionBill Murray, Casey Capachi, Compassion, DPchallenge, Gratefulness, grief, Kindness, Pay It Forward, Reddit, Sarah Larimer, Scrooged, self-help, Sophia Steffel, Washington PostBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: Stand By Me by Otis Redding on Album Pain in my Heart

Feeling grumpy, crotchety, stubborn or a bit sequestered today? Get ready, because that is about to change, I promise! In pondering the significance of kindness in my life, as blogger Erica has challenged our community this week, I am finding myself deeply grateful for this opportunity to talk about the beauty of the human spirit. It is a place in our hearts that always draws us together, even when we think those words are cliché or just a bunch of hooey!

My mind stores up moments of kindness like a big jar of peanut M&Ms that teachers tempt kids with through a guessing game of how many are harbored within that glass. They are colorful, sweet and have the added bonus of not rotting our teeth. And I digress. Then I came across an awesome story on the Washington Post by Sarah Larimer and Casey Capachi titled “Today in uplifting internet news: Redditors help father who lost his infant daughter.” The story was like an envelope being opened on stage for Best Motion Picture at the Oscars and given the chance, I couldn’t help myself but open it. I didn’t even question opening it, as of course I have limited views on news stories here, seriously!

The story- a 26 year old father who recently lost his newborn named, Sophia. One of the few pictures he had of her with open eyes and alertness in tow was also full of her evident struggle to survive- hospital equipment. As the tears started pouring, my eyes and breath strained to read more of the story about a shooting star that flew across our sky for only a brief moment. He submitted this one picture to Reddit and asked if anyone could Photoshop out the tubes to create a memory that would survive for him and the mother.

“Since she was in the hospital her whole life we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes. Can someone remove the tubes from this photo?” Wrote the 26 year old father named Nathen Steffel

The father didn’t only receive a beautiful, single edited photo, he received thousands of messages and also some mailed presents containing drawings, even an embroidered blanket. This story is a beautiful representation of our capacity to love and how one request can be an opportunity for thousands of people to respond in kindness and appreciation for the preciousness of life and how it affects us.

The people that responded saw these parents’ pain in their own experiences. They saw themselves and wanted to give comfort and love. Beautiful compassion for the human experience that we all endure every day of both living and passing away. And I leave this blog post with one thing- thank you, Sophia, for gracing our world with this beautiful opportunity to remember how fleeting and luminous our lives are. Your kindness will help me remember to not lose sight of what is important in this world, how we choose to live our lives and “pay it forward.”

At the end of one of my favorite films, Scrooged, Bill Murray’s character gave a speech that no matter what, always made me crave more. I would sit up at night, even in the summer, and replay this one scene just to see the son of his assistant who had stopped talking since witnessing his father’s death, to say one thing, “And God Bless Us Everyone.” If you have time today, check out this article and re-watch the scene in Scrooged (Click Here!). Remember, “If you give, then it can happen, then the miracle can happen to you.”

Let’s Rock Big Love!

In Hope Let Freedom Be in All of This

July 10, 2014Compassion, Forgiveness, Freedom, PerceptionAmy Goodman, Attachment, Chelsea Manning, Compassion, Democracy Now, Edward Snowden, Ego, Empowerment, forgiveness, Freedom, Gratefulness, Julian Assange, Life, Nelson Mandela, Perception, purposeful perception, Self Perception, The Naked and the Famous, The Soup Dragons, WikiLeaksBorn to Be

Recommended Listening Soundtrack: All of This by The Naked and Famous

As I walked out the door to the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison. Nelson Mandela

Julian Assange. Chelsea Manning. Edward Snowden. Palestinians. Israelis. You. Me. Everyone. What do we all have in common? This question vexes me, and is one I have been unable to ignore since a run-in with one of my favorite songs, an interview on Democracy Now and the US’s most recent national holiday on the 4^th of July.

When the song by The Soup Dragons titled I’m Free came out, me and 2 of my best friends with a new license to drive would whirl around town blaring that song over and over again (when I say over and over again, I really mean OVER AND OVER again). It was perfect teen Saturday night fodder that fed our perception of delusional freedom- or was it delusional? We bonded through that song, and I still love to pretend in my own delusional reality that this white girl can hang during the Reggae outburst toward the song’s end.

Best singing in car scene ever, courtesy of Wayne’s World!

As I was singing along to it again recently, it coincidentally fell upon my ears following the US’s national 4^th of July holiday. A holiday that is supposed to be about celebrating “freedom.” And, as I later was listening to an interview with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange the same day, I found myself confused at a clogged up intersection of questions and fate in my heart regarding this mythological word we use quite frequently, freedom. Personal freedom. Freedom of choice. Freedom of speech. Freedom of press. Freedom of expression. Our freedom. Their freedom. It all started a big racket in my head, with ideas and images honking at other ideas and images to just get out of the way!

Nelson Mandela imprisoned, photo from NPR story July 2nd 2013, Louise Gubb/Corbis

After being imprisoned for 27 years, Nelson Mandela was quoted as saying, “As I walked out the door to the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” This statement is so profound, as it points out that imprisonment is beyond our physical world, it starts in our mind, and ripples outward like a broken dam. Yet as I write this, I can hear in the back of my head a distinct argumentative voice blabbering on, “Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. We’ve all heard that before.” All of us are engaged in the same challenge of deciphering between the imprisonment of the mind’s demons, our past and what it means to not be a slave to our thoughts.

What a challenge. To coexist in a world of hatred and a need for love and human contact. My younger self asks questions that really can’t be answered like, “Why does everything have to become so complicated?” As a teen, I was given the simple luxury of being able to drive around with my friends when I was in high school and sing along to a song like “I’m Free” by a group that actually, really called itself The Soup Dragons. And that memory will always make me laugh, and feel sad at the same time.

I had the option to question freedom and not worry that something could happen to me for speaking my mind or that someone would be listening to my telephone conversation and peg me as a troublemaker just because I questioned my government. But so many others don’t have the freedom to live in the naivety of the “teenage dream.” Many children and adults are still faced with painful challenges like, will their house still be standing by the end of the day or will they be kidnapped and even killed today because of a thousand year old belief system?

Conclusion? Our commonality outweighs the perception of “different.” Toward the end of the Amy Goodman interview she asked Julian Assange, whose been living a life of his own imprisonment in the London Ecuadorian embassy, “What gives you hope?” He answered, “Well, hopefully the greatest legacy is still to come.” No matter what we believe, we can all choose to meet in that place of hope and be a part of that legacy. It’s making that choice instead of empowering the ego driven “need to be right” that holds the key to finding that freedom together.

But for now, I’ll just rock away to the Soup Dragons and envision what it will feel like when we can collectively cross our self-imprisonment border of bitterness and hatred, see ourselves in one another, and smile without hesitation that anything is possible. “All of This” does not have to tear us apart.

A World of Objectification? Maybe.

February 27, 2014Carl Jung, Compassion, DPChallenge, Ego, Life Coach, Media, Mind, PerceptionAlec Baldwin, Compassion, DPchallenge, Ego, Goya, Kevin Arnold, Media, Monet, Objectification, Perception, Princess Diana, Wonder YearsBorn to Be

“In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day. What’s the Boy Scout code? Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. Reverent. I might be all of those things, at certain moments. But people suspect that whatever good you do, you are faking. You’re that guy.” Alec Baldwin

You have to love it when someone has just had enough, and instead of sitting on the sidelines, they helplessly try to make their peace with their antagonist. Especially when it surfaces as a public rant. The rebellious part of me roots them on, but there is the other part of me that feels sad they were brought to the point of insane expressionism. One minute you can be feeling light and airy like a painting by Monet, the next minute you feel like you’re being devoured by Saturn in one of Goya’s “Black Paintings.”

We’ve all been there- especially at the end of a relationship that has gone totally downhill. After long periods of distress with anyone, you reach your breaking point. It is how you handle those breaking points that can create a defining moment in your life. You might find yourself hurling a spoon of mashed potatoes at your brother’s face like Kevin in the Wonder Years during a family dinner (insert laughter here!). Or you might be like Alec Baldwin earlier this week, writing an angry manifesto to the world of media saying “goodbye to the public life”.

Projecting Our Positives and Negatives

Yes, guilty as charged- I read it. And, I have to admit, I feel compassion for him. People who live in the public eye, whether they are “celebrities” or “politicians”, have drawn a tough lot in many ways. Everything they say or do is scrutinized, judged. The person that once existed in that shell of a body eventually becomes objectified by a media that has become a constant feeding source for the ego. They aren’t human beings anymore to the public that reads these stories or checks out their picture in People magazine. They become a story, an image to laugh at, an image to aspire to- but the human being, the world unto itself, slowly disappears in the words that try to paint a picture about them. The rabble will project their light and darkness on them and make them become what they want in that moment. It’s like an energy vampire feeding time.

Remembering Compassion, Remembering We Are Not Objects

In conjunction with this, I recently saw the film about one of our world’s most objectified women- Diana with Naomi Watts, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. I knew nothing about this film, and saw it on Amazon one night, wondering what the heck it was and its take on her life. To say the least, it was very well done. The film showed how difficult the life of Princess Diana became towards the end due to the media, eventually leading to her tragic death. She developed all of these strategies to get to places without the media’s knowledge, just to do something that we would see as mundane. Getting a hamburger for her was like obtaining a visa to visit Azerbaijan.

Towards the end of the film, before her fatal car crash, she attempted to eat a meal at her hotel’s restaurant, when a camera flashes from another diner. She had absolutely no privacy and you could see in Naomi Watts’ performance a shell of a person that had lost the love of her life because she couldn’t avoid the media’s attention.

Alec Baldwin stated in his letter that, “In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.” I find this statement fascinating, because it is true that we appear to another as they choose to perceive us. Yes, we all have “bad” days. And, yes- we all have “good” days. That’s because we are all of it- both good and bad. We never know what a person is going through, how their world may be falling apart or coming together. Knowing this, it may help us to be more compassionate beings and remember when you do see someone falling apart- that could be me.