I will be rebranding this newsletter in August. I'm excited about it, and we will talk about it more over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we will wrap up this series on the rules for life.
Compassion is a tough thing. Forgiveness is a tough thing. We tend to think of both as they relate to other people, and we're going to talk about that, but it's important that we also consider them as they pertain to ourselves.
Compassion is seeing suffering and feeling compelled to do something to relieve it. Forgiveness is letting go of anger or a feeling of being wronged by someone.
It's important to recognize that both require actions, which means that there is an element of choice in both. They are not character traits but rather choices that we make. With both, the more that we choose them, the easier they become.
When we choose compassion, we are choosing to recognize that the person we are directing it toward is suffering. Compassion is easiest when we do not qualify this suffering or let ourselves start parsing things out as deserved or undeserved. Suffering sucks, and we can always have compassion for that root experience.
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