Welcome to the Notebook series. These are stories from my time abroad, each connected to one main take-away that I learned during those years.
Read the preceding Notebook posts here: INTRO // 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6
This post contains the story for the insight: "Compassion is the key to happiness," titled, "Politics From Afar."
Reading time: 5 minutes
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POLITICS FROM AFAR
"Compassion is the key to happiness"
While I was in Asia, the 2020 US election happened. Of course, as a user of social media, I was not immune to the barrage of news, updates, and negativity swirling around the event. I watched and learned just enough to inform myself, so I could make educated decisions for my absentee ballot vote (don't worry; I did my due diligence of non-media/non-social media research, too). I won't share any of my political views here, as that is not the point of this piece. But I will share how I felt about what I observed, and how desperately I knew that we needed to add compassion in order to resolve anything.
Division is one of the most detrimental traits in humanity, I think. Not like differing of opinions - that is great and needed - but the kind that pits groups against each other with no room for tolerance. The kind that breeds anger, hatred, and the "me vs. them" mentality. It made me so sad to see my home country descend into such a deep and painful division. It looked like they were just going further and further into their own poles (funny as I am writing this while flying over the North Pole - but I digress). I watched and felt a sense of, how are they going to recover from this? How are they going to unite again? Is it possible? A one word answer came to me:
Compassion.
It was so clear. Compassion would solve all of this negativity and hatred. It wouldn't make everyone agree, but rather it would have them understand: "they are humans just like me," "they are not evil because of their views." Even for the politicians, no matter how much we disagree with their words or actions. They are human too, and they have reasons why they do and say what they do. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't stand up for what we know is right, no. It just means that our attitude about it brings so much less suffering, for others and (mainly) for ourselves. I watched people all over make themselves sick with anger and hatred toward the "other," posting on social media, "I want you out of my life forever if you vote for ___." How sad that we are ready to reduce someone to the box they tick on a poll, and cancel them for that.
Perhaps there are many factors I don't understand because I wasn't actually there on the ground while all of this was happening. Even so, I know my own suffering about the election was instantly reduced when I looked on it with compassion. In this way, compassion is the key to our happiness. It is the key to unity, to fixing the deep and painful divides in our society. We don't have to agree, but we have to love each other through our disagreements. Realize that many beliefs do stem out of ignorance. But love the people anyway. It's possible to disagree completely with someone while still wishing them well. Anger mostly just hurts the angry. One of my favorite quotes attributed to Buddha goes: "Anger is like a hot coal; it is the one who holds onto it who is burned."
You don't have to agree with everyone.
But try to love them anyway.
Compassion certainly couldn't hurt you or them.
Enjoy your capacity for love rather than exhausting your capacity for hate.
You deserve compassion, and you deserve the happiness that comes from compassion within yourself.
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WHAT I HAVE LEARNED
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