Tag Archives: compassion

Sorry, my brain is full

Since March there have been so many new demands on educators. The path has not been easy. And the new school year has added many more expectations compared to having 70% of the year already completed, when Covid-19 brought with it the new phrase, ‘remote learning’.

How do I do effective group work with students one or two meters apart? How do I do collaborative projects and minimize the sharing of resources? How do I facilitate student-to-student communication when some students are in class and the rest are learning from home? How do I effectively engage students working from home on web conferencing tools. These and many more questions combine to overwhelm educators who are coping with learning on the fly as they navigate a new frontier.

It really isn’t easy.

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Let’s pause here and think about our students:

How does it feel to be new to a country, not know the language, and have to learn, when everything said needs to be translated and most words are not understood?

How does it feel to be introduced to y=mx+b when you struggle with Math, and never really understood how ‘x‘ was a number, and fractions confuse you?

How does it feel to have to learn the krebs cycle when the chemistry and vocabulary is all totally new to you?

How are you supposed to interpret the meaning of a story when every 5th word is either new to you or seems out of context related to the words around it?

How are you supposed to work from home when the home environment is filled with distractions and interruptions that don’t happen at school?

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While educators struggle to learn in new environments and with new tools, let’s pause and think about how hard learning is for some of our kids, who are also learning in new environments and with new tools… and new content they have never seen before.

Appreciating your family

Sometimes it’s easy to take advantage of the people that are closest to you; to leverage the fact that they are just ‘always there’. The very people that would do anything for you in a time of need are the same ones who you expect to be there without showing any gratitude.

Sometimes it is easy to get frustrated by your family; to roll your eyes and think ‘here we go again’, rather than seeing things from their perspective. The very people that most appreciate you for who you are do not always get treated as nicely as a stranger would be treated.

Sometimes it is easy to be triggered by your family; to be immediately upset by something they say or do, something that you would tolerate far more by someone unrelated.

There is the saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, think of the first word in the phrase: familiarity. It is the family, that you are in close association with, that you know best, that can lead to a loss of respect, or lead to disrespect, from close awareness of faults or repeated behaviours that you don’t like.

It only takes an absence of these people in your lives, through time, geography, or death, to help you recognize that your familiarity also breeds love, compassion, and appreciation for those that love you, and that you love. Familiarity breeds love. Familiarity breeds compassion. Familiarity breeds appreciation. Or at least is should.

Who in your family can you show gratitude for today? What’s stopping you?

Hurt people hurt people

I have a sticky note on my computer monitor at school that says,

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

As a principal, I think it’s important to remember that those who harm others have themselves often been harmed. This helps me focus on resolution and restoration rather than retribution.

It’s harder to remember this with adults who harm, adults who have been hurt, and leave a path of hurt in their trail. I remember years ago, when I was a middle school teacher, dealing with a hurt parent. In a meeting, this parent used language in front of their kid like, ‘he’s useless’, and ‘I’ve given up trying’. The student sat motionless, staring blindly ahead, trying to keep the tears away. Nothing I said about his endearing qualities changed his empty look any more than his parent’s insults.

Hurt people hurt people.

It has been my observation that hurt people seek out other hurt people. They do so to continue the hurt, or to try to heal the the hurt they see. However those who are hurt and want to help lack the resilience to cope, and they lack the strategies to heal. Good intentions are devoured by ineffective strategies.

Healed people heal people.

I think people need to heal themselves before they try to heal others. This is easy to see in situations such as alcoholism. We know a recovering alcoholic can do far more to help an alcoholic quit than another alcoholic can. It’s much harder to see with someone who feels like a victim trying to help someone else who was victimized, or with someone who is dealing with mental health issues trying to help someone else struggling with mental health.

The people who are struggling and seeking to help are not healed themselves, but believe they can help others when they should be helping themselves first. Their intentions are good. They want to help, but when they can’t cope with their own hurt, it’s hard to honestly help with others.

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

In some ways we are all on journeys of healing. And many of us want to help others heal too. It’s just important for us to work on our own healing before trying to heal others.

______________________

Related: Hidden Pain on my Pair-a-Dimes blog.

an original sin

I want to talk about something sinful. I say this in the hope that it promotes Good, not anger. Please keep that intent in mind as you read.

I’ve said this elsewhere before:

I think the two most noblest of traits are compassion and forgiveness.
Compassion because it links us to others in a way that we lose ourselves.
Forgiveness because more than any other trait, it can not be faked
and true forgiveness is to see love even in the faults of others.

This post is not directly about compassion and forgiveness but it is about being noble: having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals. It is about being responsive in a way the shows high moral principles in the most religious sense… where all great religions share common beliefs.

This post is about two things, Good and Evil. I believe there is capital ‘G’ Good in this world and also capital ‘E’ Evil in this world. I believe these forces are at battle globally, nationally, locally and personally. We have both good and evil wolves within us all and we chose which one we feed. I question which one is being fed in today?

Osama Bin Ladin is dead.

I do not question if he was Evil. Osama Bin Ladin is dead and the world has been rid of an Evil man.

What I fear now, what scares me, is the response I see to his death. It is vengeful, vindictive. It is spurred by hate. I see the only of the 7 deadly sins not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest: wrath.

I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it around the world. My earliest memory of it was when Ronald Reagan was shot. I sat, shocked, watching my friends television after school, one of the scenes shared, a celebration in the streets of an unremembered country, far from the US in distance, diplomacy and idealism. It felt wrong. I have the same feeling now.

And so I seek to see things from multiple perspectives and to understand things that we may miss because we take things for granted in our own culture and in our own fixed perspective.

President Obama said on the death of Osama Bin Ladin and in discussing the tragedy of 9/11, “… And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

I remember watching that on television too. Much of the world gasping for breath as towers crumbled. And once again, scenes shared of celebrations in the streets of other countries, far from the US in distance, diplomacy and idealism. This too felt wrong. I have the same feeling now.

How many have died since the towers fell? How many parent-less children are there? …the victims of a war on Hate. Victims: not gun-wielding Evil men and women… Just people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“… And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.”

Without doing research I would estimate the number of deaths from the war on Hate to be closer to 300,000 than 3,000. But the totals are not shared to be compared, they are both significant numbers that exceed zero, making them painful reminders of Evil. They leave gaping holes in many of our hearts.

It is hard for any of the surviving family members, victims in different countries but with common suffering, to see the Good in this world. But we do have Good in this world. And there is room for more of it. There is always room for compassion and forgiveness. There is always a possible response that is noble: having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.

An evil man is dead. I see celebrations around the world and this too feels wrong.

Will the killing stop? I read a book about ‘The Spider and the Starfish’. You sever a leg of a spider and it is crippled. You sever the leg of a starfish and it grows a new one. I fear that al Qaeda is more starfish than spider.

How do we let the Good in us reign? Where can we now seek love? Where can we show compassion? To whom can we show forgiveness? How can we bring peace to our world?

An evil man is dead. This is cause for relief, not rejoicing; reconciliation, not retribution; reflection, not wrath.

Compassion and Forgiveness

I shared this in a comment on Tom Altepeter’s post titled ‘Family‘ today, and wanted to share it in my own space too:

__________

I think the two most noblest of traits are compassion and forgiveness.


Compassion because it links us to others in a way that we lose ourselves.


Forgiveness because more than any other trait, it can not be faked
and true forgiveness is to see love even in the faults of others.
I believe that family helps us to find both
compassion and forgiveness in ourselves.

__________

Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds.
~Dave.