Compassion On a Daily Basis

I am dealing with ill and aging parents.  Not mine, mine passed away many years ago.  But most of my friends and my husband are witnessing their parents age; some not so gracefully.  And issues arise, like the sun each morning, issues long thought handled, healed and transformed arise.  Those smelly, stinky, uncomfortable, hurtful issues. 

One of my friends has an in-law living with them, in his experience, he feels like he is constantly being lied to.  Whether it is about how the parent feels, what happened, where they were, anything feels like the truth is not told, but a made up lie is being told.   In my experience, I feel that what I do is unrecognized and unappreciated.  Both of us realize these are old issues or triggers from our pasts.  Now we get to deal with them on a new and deeper level.  "Oh, yippe" we seemed to say.  Might as well take on climbing Mount Everest, that would be easier!  (Maybe that's why some do.)

It occurs to me that life is just that.  One gets issues, and they stay with us from birth to the grave.  On possibility' is to embrace them, have a sense of humor about them,  keep them from running the show and transform them not only for our benefit, but for the benefit of others.  By expressing compassion through feeling our way while triggered, feeling the sadness and pain, just being with the trigger and breathing, we gain the power to diminish the grip and control they have over us.  Eventually they sit on the sidelines, there but impotent to affect us.


Every time I embrace one of the things that 'others do to me' or 'against me' and allow myself to feel the pain that resides, I free not only myself from the repetitive nature of our complaints, but it creates an opening for others to express their pain and suffering.  That is the basis of Al Anon, granting a place where it was safe to express the demons inside with no agenda.