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Published in Waking Up on the Planet
Wake-Up Call: Troubled Waters
By Karen M. Jones
It's been a dramatic couple of weeks, with emotions from hurricane response and suffering mingling with the anniversary of September 11. Along with those of you who emailed and weighed in at our online forum, Compassion Fruit, I found my own moods drifting from anger to despair to grief to hope to gratitude and back again. Through it all, I always found comfort, eventually, in doing something.
Two quotes from the Benevolent Planet website that seem appropriate:
"Don't find fault. Find a remedy. "
~Henry Ford
"The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor."
~Hubert H. Humphrey
While I wrestled with the anger stirred up by chaotic relief efforts, I eventually moved forward into meaningful action, per Henry Ford's wisdom. Along the way, I began to shift my perspective.
Legions of people -- politicians, military personnel, public servants, rescue workers, church volunteers, laborers, etc. -- were and are involved in the relief effort. Chances are that every single one of them feels like he or she could or should have done more, done it better, done it differently. While it's easier for us to blame the faction or individuals who routinely challenge our personal values, is it possible that we're angry about the poverty, despair and human struggle that we abide, not just in America but all over the world?
As most of you know, I talk a lot about "expressing our common humanity" and the interconnection of all living things. Before I started Benevolent Planet, these were merely concepts to me -- before I started to experience, viscerally, this bond with those I saw suffering on the televised news. You know it when you feel it: like you are right there with them, hiding from the school shooter, running with your terrified child down a war-torn street, shifting your starving, dehydrated baby from hip to hip in rising floodwaters. You recognize yourself in their faces and in their fear; they aren't just people you'd like to help, not just your brothers and sisters, they are you and you are them, like parts of one being. No wonder we are angry, and desperate, and numb.
The hurricane happened in America, but this phenomenon is exactly the same with each human tragedy that speaks to us from Iraq, Beslan, London, Madrid, Sri Lanka. We want to blame and explain and fix -- God, Evil, global warming, tsunami warning systems, George Bush, Osama bin Laden, racism, nationalism, Homeland Security -- because facing and accepting our suffering is so painful. But if we could, we might see every day as the chance to alleviate some of it, lighten another's load, strengthen the chain...and by doing so, alleviate our own pain, lighten our own load, strengthen our connection. "...what I do unto others, I do unto myself," writes Marc Ian Barasch in Notes From the Compassionate Life. A crucial refining of the Golden Rule that expresses exactly this notion.
We may still get angry and frustrated at certain leaders and officials and policies. But if we can imagine that, when we rail against a politician, we injure a part of ourselves, perhaps we can divert our energies and look, instead, for those who present real chances to heal.
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