The world needs connection. Actually, we need to realize more that the connection is already there. We need to understand that everything we do doesn’t’ just affect us but the ripple our behavior causes extends further than we think – it’s a matter of cause and effect. And in order to want to cause better things, we need compassion too – compassion for animals and nature, compassion for others, and certainly compassion for ourselves.
True compassion for yourself doesn’t mean justifying your own behavior but daring to be honest about the times you didn’t make the best choice, that sometimes you don’t know what the best choice is, and that sometimes, even if you have all the information, it’s still incredibly difficult to do the right thing. If you can be honest about that, then you can dare to open yourself up to how bad it feels when you have consciously ignored the law of cause and effect.
I also think this is a way in which we can feel our equality in terms of our necessary and conditioned needs. If we take a moment to think about it, we can feel the pain of those who are fleeing from drought, of the people who have lost their homes due to a forest fire or flood, of the children who are playing on rubbish heaps.
It is painful to realize we are contributing, to varying extents, to these kinds of disasters. And it also hurts to realize it’s hard to change despite that awareness. There’s no point in feeling sympathy for that pain; there’s not enough time left. But if we push the feeling away and try to forget it, we create a taboo that causes us to blame each other. We point fingers and blame each other for being dishonest, for our fear, our greed and everything we don’t understand in life. And then the sense of connection is gone.
That connection the world so desperately needs.