Something is resolving itself in you. Give it space. Let it be what it is for now. Jumbled, messy, painful. Gut wrenching. Gut squeezing.
True humility is not inserting yourself in the story of another. Putting yourself in their shoes by recollecting their story. Their past. Their circumstances from your perspective.
Your perspective is skewed. It’s not clean. There’s a lot at play there. Sentimentality. Guilt. Unmet trauma. A belief in suffering. A belief in taking in the pain of others. It’s tampered with.
This kind of empathy and humility requires you to enter the field of suffering. To suffer because others are suffering. It’s diluted with conditioning. Familial conditioning, cultural conditioning and collective conditioning. And it only brings pain and confusion.
It’s no good. No good for you. And no good for others. But you can stop at no good for you. That’s all you need to know.
Beneath this ‘humility’, this ’empathy’ is a fear of aloneness. It’s really an unmet childhood need of trying to seek comfort where comfort can’t be found. From family, from strangers. Outside yourself.
By comforting family at a time of need, you’ll be comforted. By showing kindness to a stranger in need, you’ll be shown kindness. By denying the judgement and even hatred in you toward them because these are not “virtuous” qualities, there’ll be hope.
By being the good one, that’s somehow comforting. For yourself. Because it sure as hell isn’t comforting for anybody else. If I’m good, maybe they’ll be good. Maybe they won’t judge or hate me. Maybe they’ll be there for me. Come to their senses.
By over-extending yourself, crossing your own boundaries, saying what “needs” to be said, doing what needs to be done etc. etc.
All this…
This is a deep, deep unmet pain.
It’s a misconstrued idea of what goodness is, what help is, what empathy is. It’s the road to hell paved with good intentions. And it comes from fear. A gut fear. A gut fear to see what you don’t want to see.
To see the raw naked barrenness of the landscape of your environment. It might not be like this for everyone. But it is the case for you. And it needs to be addressed. Otherwise, it’s like a leaking gasket.
You need to clean up your own mess. You can’t come to the rescue of others. You simply can’t without an unwavering sense of clarity and precision within yourself.
And you might need to accept that you might never be able to rescue them. That maybe just maybe, they don’t need to be rescued. They just don’t. It’s not your job and most importantly, you can’t.
Something in you is calling out for rescue.
Something in you doesn’t want to face the coldness, the aloneness, the barrenness of the landscape of where you found yourself. And so tries to find the warmth by creating the warmth.
Lighting fires in Antartica and telling eskimos to come gather round it. You’re the one who’s cold, you’re the one that can’t handle the cold of Antartica. Not the eskimos.
The futility of the effort to create warmth has to bring you to your knees. Pretty much like everything else. And the futility of this one is a big one. It’s an impossible task that you’ve undertaken since childhood. And it plays itself out in everything.
It’s the over-extended empathy, the saccharine sentimentality, the rancid guilt and projection of the suffering of others. The idealizing of others and of yourself and of what it’s supposed to look like. What it’s supposed to be like. The potential of it.
Maybe it’s time to see clearly.
Oh, these guys are fucking eskimos. I’m the one who’s freezing my ass off here. I’m the one who’s left out in the cold. They’re packing their gear, living in their igloo’s, eating blubber or whatever, and I’m starving, freezing, butt naked.
Maybe I need to realize, I am in Antartica.
This isn’t an invitation for escape. No. It’s an invitation to stop and look around and really take in the fact of Antartica.
The fact of I’m trying and have been trying my whole life to make Antarctica warm. And notice the self compassion that comes in. Like seeing it in the eyes of a lost innocent child, that fear, that despair, that aloneness.
Notice the mercy you would have on that child. Bring that mercy to yourself. Really love yourself for even trying. And just comfort that one.
You’ve been trying so hard little one. You’ve really been up against it. With this impossible task. Aw, I love you. You don’t need to do this anymore. This isn’t your job anymore. Let’s take you out of here and bring you the warmth of the sun. No more little fires, no more. Sit here under the sun and I’ll sit with you. Closer than close. Leave the eskimos be. All they know is Antarctica. And it is no longer your concern. Your concern is sitting under the sun. Regardless of everyone else.
And maybe one day you’ll realize you’re actually in Hawaii. And there’s a bunch of crazies walking around in Eskimo clothing all over the place. How odd.
Maybe not…
But start with breathing into your gut. Literally. Breathing into that clench. That somatic sense of the tight fist. That squeeze. Breathe into that again and again. And again and again.
And notice the projections when they come up. Notice the projections of other’s suffering. Notice and come back to yourself. Sit under the sun.
Something will want to leave and go back into the barren landscape of Antartica on a “heroic” journey to save an eskimo. Or to come to the aid of an eskimo that’s starting to feel the landscape of Antartica. None of your business. You don’t need to save anyone, nor come to the aid of anyone.
Attend to yourself.
Keep coming back. Under the sun. Bask under the warmth and light of the sun.
That is your one and only responsibility regardless of what anyone around you is doing, thinking or believing. About themselves or about you.