Exactly...Now my question to you is how do you practice something you have never learned? How do you become good at it?
I am not sure I can answer this for you but I'll give you a head start.
The truth is in order to show compassion and/or to be compassionate you really have to think about it. Yes, you have to think about it.
Try to recall a moment in which you were not at the center of?
"Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real." - David Foster Wallace
You see our natural default is to fall back on our feelings and how they are the most important in the world.
Think about school for instance. You are walking into your classroom and you have to take a test for AP Economics, or Chemistry or Calculus and you are stressed out and confused and you are mad at your parents and siblings, because they did not turn off the television when you asked them to last night so you could not prepare for the test properly so you are tired and confused. And you are wondering how this subject is ever going to help you in life and you hate everyone around you. And then you have to sit on a dirty tagged up desk and a seat that makes you butt ache. Then you walk out to the hall and in front of you is a person walking as slow as a turtle and I mean it is not like you have to go to your next class right? And what about the stupid people to your right talking about how wasted they got the other day and who they had sex with. And you're angry and frustrated, because you have to get to your next class. And the boy next to you is speaking spanish and you are irritated and all you want to do is punch someone. The noise level is so loud and all you want to do is drown everybody out and then someone bumps you with their backpack and they say sorry in the most fake voice ever and you glare at them with a glare of death...and then there is the girl laughing hysterically with all her friends and you are wondering what the hell is funny? because to you nothing is funny at the moment. And you are thinking about the crowded hall and you are wondering how many of the people around you are actually going to college anyways and you are thinking how all these stupid people are in YOUR way. All you are really thinking about is YOUR anger and YOUR tiredness and YOUR needs...
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it was not them in your way, but you in theirs?
