Easy To Be Hard

I've begun lumping the two events together, though they have very little to do with each other. And maybe "lump" is the wrong word; that makes it sound careless and mean. This marriage of unhappy and unrelated partners was subconscious, I believe. They are both about loss, one far more tragic than the other, but they share a common pain rooted in disbelief and shock.

I feel terrible, both in general and for linking these people who did not know each other, who did not share a fate but whom I can no longer see or touch, speak to, yell at, hug. Two of them are gone physically; one of them is gone emotionally and also physically, at least in my world.

How truly unfair it is to remove yourself from someone's life without warning. How unbearably cruel for those left behind. My mind cannot fathom either loss. I had equated his walking away with a death long before the accident, long before the tragedy that ripped two caring, compassionate souls from the world in the most heartbreaking way possible. Why would you choose to walk away from a solid place without a genuine cause when you can so easily be torn from this world without warning?

Compassion is difficult. It's no simple task to forgive and understand something you don't know anything about, something you judge as wrong or bad. It's painstakingly hard to look at these situations and say, "Maybe I can learn from this. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing. Maybe this person is just as complex as I am but in different ways." For a lot of people, this thought process does not exist. The shortest way out of those situations is to jump to condemnation and move on.

Easy to be hard. Easy to be cold.

I've been guilty of lack of compassion as much as anyone else in this world. But I try to recognize it when it happens and I realize why it's so toxic. This is why I try so hard, as much as I can, to choose love. Love those whom society and judgment says you should hate. Love those your ego cannot tolerate. Be above yourself at these times. Because hate breeds more hate; it's a scientific fact. But love breeds more love. And who doesn't want more love?