TL;DR: Navel-gazing post inspired by journaling and a podcast. I explore my general relationship strategy and discuss compassion, judgment, control, and leadership.
I’m still working through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I finished Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion. Compassion is a word that I believed I knew the meaning of, but I looked it up anyway.
- From the Latin root, compati, meaning ‘suffer with.’ “Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”
I wrote my morning pages today about when and where I have compassion for others and for myself. Reading my journal, the answer seems to be ‘all too often.’
My tendency in human relations is toward drama, exuberance, and feelings. Not my own feelings. Only within the last ten or so years have I become able to get in touch with my emotions from moment-to-moment.
No, my default state is feeling the emotions of others, whether beautiful or horrible. Feeling them constantly and let’s call it what it is: detrimentally. I am in a state of compassion or empathy, more concerned for the experience of anyone around me than myself, about 97% of the time.
What this has lead to is a series of lifelong, exterior-focused habits. I expect that my students, people who’ve been to my parties, all my close friends, have experienced me “checking-in” with them. I feel a constant drive to ensure others are comfortable and happy.
For example, my pages are full of thoughts about friends. I scan the rolodex in my head constantly, which means they might receive texts, letters, or phone calls from me, out of the blue to say, “I’m thinking about you. How are you holding up?” Every day I follow up on something going on in the lives of those connected to me. Beyond social media, I’m in contact to offer whatever help I can think of, a lot of the ideas for which I journal about in those daily pages.
My writing is full of my friends. My travel (pre-COVID) always included visiting. In-person it is easier to know how folks are truly doing. Making time for people and relationships with them is one of my core values, end most days, the names of loved ones are all over my journal pages.
Another favorite pastime is to connect people who can help each other. I’ve done some successful matchmaking in my time, facilitated the creation of groups that have lasted for years, and encouraged prior co-workers to continue to network.
Sharing resources brings me joy, and every new thing I learn, experience, or stumble across, abandoned on a corner, prompts the thoughts: Who needs to know about this? Who could benefit?
All of my relationships are based on my commitment to reach out, listen, feel…
And then judge.
WAIT: WHAT? Why? Why would you judge? That’s horrible!
Two reasons:
1) Judgment is love (for me).
2) Judgment enables narrative.
In the same way someone making me a cake or dinner…even just a cup of tea, makes me feel loved, someone teaching me, correcting me, critiquing me, and calling me out for a lack of knowledge or a bad action shows me they love me.
They trust me to hear a negative comment and assume their intent is honorable.
They want me to be a better writer, teacher, artist, or person.
I’m not saying it feels GOOD. When I fuck up I feel shame and guilt and sadness. When someone points out I’ve done something wrong, I feel awful at first…but I also feel very grateful for their trust in me. I feel connected to those who give me life advice and frank criticism.
Looking inside, I’ve come to believe that for me, and maybe others wired the way I am, judgment is not a negative act. Judgment should not always be avoided or condemned. Judgment, for me, is a direct result of compassion.
When I am with someone who is feeling pain, fear, despair, angst, grief, anxiety, sadness…going through the hell of emotions I have felt at one time or another, I am driven. My goal is to find the root cause, discover a solution, or simply turn a negative emotion around with breath, humor, or love.
I see you.
I feel you.
I see and feel a bad situation, a problem, an uncomfortable emotion.
Then, I want to help it change.
And this goes not only for people. I want positive change for a process, a procedure, a method. It’s the same for a system in an organization, a group, or a team that is broken. Shit hitting the fan is, truly, though I understand the satirical connotation, an opportunity. An opportunity to hurt less. Achieve more. I am driven to make it better.
This drive is a compulsion for me because when anyone is hurting, I am hurting. If something is broken, I want to fix it. But I’m not Dr. Horrible. I don’t want the fix solely for myself. I have no desire to act alone, change for the sake of change, or act without consensus.
In episode 69 of her podcast, You’re Welcome, Hilary Rushford talks about why people judge and criticize others. She offers instructions on The Compliment Sandwich as How to Speak Up and Still Have People Like You.
The episode is worth a listen and offers insight about her method for deepening connections with people. This is something that resonates for me: I am always looking for deeper (hopefully nerdier) connections in my relationships.
One thing Rushford mentions is control. That some people criticize or judge because they want to control others. Or, I think, be in control of the effect relationships have on them.
I found that language interesting. The LAST thing I want is control over anyone else’s life. I can barely manage my own. Instead, I want two things:
One is for those I’m in relationship with to get themselves together enough to not negatively impact our relationship. The second thing I want from a friendship is acceptance of who I am. If a friend needs to build connection via complaining, they are inviting me to have compassion for them. They should be aware of rousing my instinct to help.
Today I tried, in my journaling, to tease out, what does being compassionate have to do with being judgmental? Why do I so frankly and unapologetically judge? And I think the answer is action. Leadership.
Judgment leads to action.
To take action, try something, experiment, learn, grow, move, to DO something about a situation or emotion, requires an assessment, a judgment, and a decision.
Being able to decide, judge, and act is being a leader. I want to help, I want something to change, so first I have to judge what is wrong, what is happening, what information I have, I need, and how can I be most helpful. Then I can lead or encourage, coach, help, or act.
All of that requires judgment.
And I would suck at being helpful if I stopped gathering information. Stopped judging situations. Stopped leading.
In addition to wanting to help others, I just like judging things. I’ve been rewarded my whole life for being judgmental and judgment is everywhere in my life: I enjoy reading books, liking them or not, and knowing why. Judging whether or not a student has learned sufficiently was my job for over 20 years. Talking to people about differences in opinion is fun. Reasoning, debating, and making a decision about where I stand, what I value, gives me pleasure. Making recommendations, offering suggestions, critiquing written work, all of these require sympathy, to understand the context, and then a judgment about a response that will hopefully move the situation toward a stated goal.
However. I try not to judge people.
Or rather, not to allow a judgment to color how I engage with them. This is why I also try to talk to people as frankly as I can. I share the data I’m working with and acknowledge my assumptions. I don’t hide my judgments about their intentions, actions, and decisions, because I want to know if the narrative in my head is accurate. I love telling stories, but to walk with them through an issue and collaborate on solutions, the narrative has to be accurate. A happy ending, say a double wedding, for a story about hatboxes makes no sense.
People in my life have complained, abandoned, or ghosted me for my tendency to be emotional, vocal, and unrelentingly judgemental. But I use my judgment to create stories. And I don’t know how to be in relationship without trying to understanding people and their stories. Without compassion.
People I have loved have left relationship with me. Those who are gone had reasons and followed their heart. That’s good because no one can keep us safe except ourselves.
I’m not good at staying safe, and I completely FAIL at leaving. I am always inclined to pour more resources and try harder in my relationships.
When it comes to unbalanced or painful relationships, Rushford shares three options in her podcast that I found helpful: fight, flight, or freeze.
Fight is pouring in time and energy. Fighting for a relationship is my default.
Flight is pretty obvious. Whether ghosting or saying a firm goodbye, flight is calling the whole thing off. I don’t mind this as long as it is final and has closure, allowing for grief. Mourning old relationships is a necessary step toward letting go. I believe it is an act of cowardice to end a relationship in a vague manner.
The last option Rushford shares in episode 69 is ‘freeze.’ Don’t move, don’t change. Take a break. Have some space. Freeze revolves around a decision not to put energy or effort into deepening a relationship. Remaining some flavor of distanced, superficial, or unengaged.
This one is hard for me, because, like Rushford, I am enlivened by deep connections. I don’t believe that deeper, more fulfilling relationships are served when I withhold judgment or pretend I don’t care as much as I do. Relationships in the ‘freeze’ category are exhausting because to engage in them I have to be on guard and self-censor. Small talk is only fun for a small amount of time.
Sometimes I ponder why once emotionally committed friendships disappear or fade away. I wonder if I didn’t truly see the person, didn’t have enough compassion…or maybe felt too much. If I am demanding, I am the one causing the unbalance, I’m glad they left, though I wish they would have bothered to tell me off. Now I won’t ever know.
I’ve certainly had my share of people being as frank with me as I’ve been with them. I’ve been told I’m terrifying and I scare people. Been told I’m rude, angry, and mean. I’ve been told I don’t mind my own business. Been told I’m aggressive. I’m intimidating.
A lot of the friends who have lasted longest are people I actively disagree with. It doesn’t do any good for them to not know how different we are. My choice is not to politely hide differences in order to retain harmony. In a relationship, I am looking for actual fixes to any conflicts, based on shared values. I am passionately opposed to hiding or lying about differences.
There are times when I probably lack compassion. When I get truly upset, how others are feeling seems less important in that moment. In those cases, I’m probably less successful at keeping my judgmental nature heading in a positive direction, toward the forces of good.
And if I judge that someone is too much of a risk to me personally, someone is likely to cause me pain over and over, I have been working toward letting that person exit my life.
But as I mentioned above, I am pretty much shit at that. I love helping people too much. Even helping people who are not nice to me is rewarding in its way.
I am so committed to my identity as a helpful friend that I keep everyone I have ever loved close, at least in my heart.
So if you’re one of my frienemies, feel free to call me up and say, “Hey Frank, do you have a minute?”
Though it’s possible (but unlikely) that I’ll say ‘no’.”
What do you think?