Thought for Today
If one never were to experience this
dark night of the soul,
one’s compassion
really would be limited.
One may have a belief,
‘I can be compassionate
with that which is light
and beautiful and loving
in myself and others’
but one has never tested it
to see if
one can also extend that compassion,
even to the utmost of darkness.
~ Aaron
This morning I did something I rarely do. I followed a link and read an article after the headline caught my attention: Deadliest place in America: They shrugged off the pandemic, then their family and friends started dying.
Dinkel says too many people are refusing to do their part to protect the elderly from COVID-19.
“To sit there and say they are old that they will die of something,” she says, “Well, they wouldn’t have died of the flu. My dad wouldn’t have been in the hospital for a month if this was the flu.”
Despite the efforts of local public health officials and experts, many residents aren’t taking the deadly pandemic seriously. Bearded farmers stride defiantly down Main Street past signs requiring them to wear masks. School is still in session and churches are open. Someone threatened to blow up the home of a pro-mask county commissioner.
Nicholson, the ambulance worker, is also co-owner of a restaurant and brewery on Main Street, and she’s had customers swear they’ll never come back after she reminded them to wear a mask when picking up food. She doesn’t want to wade into the middle of a political dispute. She just wants her neighbors to live.
But this post is not about COVID-19, even though four of our high-school classmates died of the coronavirus in just one week at home.
This post is about how mindfulness is like a bird — both need two wings to fly. The two wings of mindfulness are wisdom (clear seeing) and compassion.
Compassion is a result of seeing life’s experience clearly, therefore not everyone’s experience generates compassion. Life’s experiences reveal our world view.
The people in the deadliest place in America justify not wearing masks by saying the people who are dying are old, and people die in God’s time. The kernel of truth in not only toxic, it is deadly.
Sunday morning I went to the only grocery store here on the island. I had read “masks required” on the ad, and I checked out the website of the company to read the same thing. “Masks required” was also on the entry doors. However, customers were coming in and shopping and getting service without a mask.
Numbers in this small community on the south end of the island are climbing, yet, the Ragged Ass Saloon still hosts live music and welcomes wall-to-wall (if you can use that term about a parking lot) patrons not wearing masks or maintaining safe distancing.
As human beings, we all try our best to bring about a world based on kindness and compassion. What seems to go wrong, however, is that what I want, what I personally would like, becomes more important than the benefit of the whole community.
Yes, death will come to each of us. That is not failure. The bloom is the bud’s undoing…
We are capable of spreading our wings and soaring to the heights of wisdom and compassion.
As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.”
