Belie

No doubt the blog has been neglected this week while I happily work on my term paper for To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s masterpiece.  I mean while I work on my son’s term paper.  No, I mean while I help my son work on his term paper.  Yikes!  I just can’t help myself.  He finds himself in a huge hole dug with teenage apathy and procrastination, and it just so happens that I absolutely love this book.  How can I not give him a hand?

The novel is fraught with storylines that converge to show us in a powerful way that too often we judge people without getting to know them. Who doesn’t love Scout, the scrappy, most un-ladylike girl who’s full of sass and her own opinions which she can’t quite keep to herself?  I imagine she would have grown up to break a glass ceiling or two.   And Atticus, well, he’s just dreamy.  I swoon over his calm strength, integrity, intelligence and moral compass.  I love how he fights for justice, yet accepts that he will not always win, and how he fiercely protects his children, without completely sheltering them.  He speaks eloquently in the real and beautiful language of a man committed to living his values of humility and compassion.  I’d marry him if he existed outside the pages of a book.

Atticus is steeped in compassion, maybe to ensure we notice the other characters that are so sorely lacking in this area, those who are so quick to judge.  Compassion is a concept that is often misunderstood.  Of those who grasp it, most keep it at the surface, assuming that it is a somewhat sentimental idea but really rather worthless in the grand scheme of things.  But if you dig deep on compassion, it really is the gateway to happiness.

My book club chose The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler for this month’s discussion.  I am woefully behind in my reading and won’t be done in time for this weekend’s meeting, but this book intrigues me.  I’m looking forward to hearing whether my fellow readers believe in the Dalai’s philosophy, and whether it can really be lived in western culture. 

Many of us walk around with a lot of negative energy, assuming the worst of those around us.  I know I have spent most of my life assuming everyone is looking for something not to like about me and hanging back to see how I am received.  Talk about missed opportunities.  This is the trouble, though.  We spend so much time expecting and addressing the negative.  It’s almost like we look for fault in people.  In fact, there’s research out there that says we as a society are far more likely to key in on negative trends and issues than positive.  Ouch!  Does anyone spend any time being happy?

What I’m thinking about these days is the power we have to invite a positive response from those we interact with.  The Dalai says it like this:  "I think in many cases people tend to expect the other person to respond to them in a positive way first, rather than taking the initiative themselves to create that possibility."  What I like about this statement is the word possibility.  If we start to think about every encounter as an opportunity to create a positive experience, the possibilities to connect are endless. 

To live the Dalai’s ideal, we need to show those around us a little compassion.  Can you see beyond the facades of the onerous client, sullen teenager or short-tempered spouse?  They’re not so unlike you, sometimes just trying to get through a day.  Think about how powerful you feel when you can extract a positive response from someone.  There is victory in even the hint of a smile from the morose adolescent traipsing off to school in the early morning light.

The Dalai’s philosophy, in my opinion, is aspirational in today’s western culture.  But if we start practicing compassion it can become a regular part of our lives.  People like Atticus Finch don’t necessarily need to exist only as characters in a work of fiction.  We can put them in the real world.

So I’m now set up to receive tweets from the Dalai.  Today he said, “On a simple level we find that if we have a compassionate heart we naturally have more friends”.  I’m thinking this is probably true.