Why It’s So Hard To Act In Crisis & Three Ways We Can
CREATE A NEW PRACTICE OF COLLECTIVE COMPASSION
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
~ Helen Keller
Today, I write for us as collective.
I am overwhelmed with our world in pain, as are many others.
Our experience makes responding to those in need, and to the efforts of the crisis more challenging. I see this in myself, and yet I yearn for a way to engage in compassionate practice for the collective.
This practice is not just for when we “see” the world suffering, because we know many parts and people of the world are suffering whether we know of them or not.
To be in a collective compassion practice is to also to acknowledge our own humanity and that pain is a very hard part of our human experience.
Because when we are “with” the pain of others, we are also “with” ourselves. This is at the heart of being in a collective practice.
3 REASONS WHY IT’S HARD TO ACT IN CRISIS, PAIN & SUFFERING
#1: The Context
The global context characterized by pain and suffering has become impossible to ignore.
We have all been impacted by COVID in some way, we are appalled by the ways our world accentuates race, cultural and gender stereotypes, we share a heightened awareness that what is happening in the Ukraine is tragic, and we all have our own contextual versions of pain.
I have only named three major crises and there are so many more that deserve mentioning. The intention here is to have us see that the context we’re in has each and every one of us living with degrees of challenge, and it’s left us worn thin and feeling inertia.
This grueling context is the background and the foreground.
Our stress keeps cortisol coursing through our bodies, impacting how we move in our day. We live with high food prices, less/ different movement, less/ different amounts of social connection, conflict and misunderstanding with our varying points of view.
We cannot hide from the context of our experience.
#2: The Complexity (of the Context)
As we look at the context we’re in, there is so much for our brains to make sense of. It’s normal to want to figure things out, know what we think, move out of confusion, understand what others think so we can find the anchor of our own opinion.
There is the history, the geography, the politics of it. We’re inundated with information, and then we binge on more anyway. We’re getting varying degrees of truth and opinion and then have to find our own beliefs in that.
No amount of mental sense-making (or research) will help us understand it all. The uncertainty makes way for mental chaos and it’s impossible to understand and reconcile it all.
On the daily, we’re drinking through a firehose of information.
#3: The Emotional Overwhelm
Our hearts are feeling all the things.
We’re swimming in the deep end of the human-emotional experience, we’re afraid we’re going to drown in it so we swim nervously away, or we believe we have to drown in it to care. What else can we do but tread water?
Our hearts are full and expanding; we hear this in our heavy sighs, hearts expanding with barely a chance to recover in her contraction. We are holding so many emotions (anger, frustration, rage, sadness, despair, fear, worry) in our hearts that overflow into the body.
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The context, complexity, and the emotional overwhelm of it all has us collectively living in stress states of fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop.
How are we to be with this all and even respond? We know we want to and yet, it’s hard.
THREE SIMPLE (YET POWERFUL) WAYS TO ACT
I believe that our action must start with compassion for ourselves. What I shared above wasn’t a cerebral download, it’s the reminder that we’re in hard times. It’s uncomfortable. We’re ready for someone to change the channel on the remote of life.
It’s normal, and okay to want this. And, it’s hard times we’re in. Both are true.
My invitation with the actions below is to work at creating a (regular) “practice” of response to our collective suffering. When I say “collective”, it’s means we acknowledge that we feel pain because others feel pain.
This is a different response than immersing ourselves in guilt for the different circumstances we’re in, or electing for excessive gratitude to affirm how fortunate we are, or expressing optimism that it can only get better.
We need a practice to be in our collective suffering and to stay awake to what is happening around us.
A practice isn’t about perfection, it’s first about presence, and in it to gently work at finding your own way to (continuously) engage with and respond to the collective.
Read on to see which practice of the three feels most accessible and meaningful to you.
PRACTICE 1: Take the first, next step
It can be hard to know what is the “right” way is to respond. The question we might be asking of ourselves — “What is the right organization, or the right or best response?” can can be an overwhelming one in and of itself.
It is good to want to take meaningful, correct action and see a path forward, but could a simpler alternative be: “What is the first, next step?” and release the need to get it right?
This question is about slowing down and choosing to take a small action and know that you have enough information or ability to act now.
This question helps us take a step and to still honor our desire to do it well. It is a question that can create some gentle momentum and help us wear a path where there might not be one.
PRACTICE 2: Let “1” be enough
This practice asks us to feel into the broader collective we’re in.
In our times of pain and suffering nothing we do feels like enough. And in fact that is true, there is nothing any one person can do.
Yet, if we harness our collective spirit and stay awake to the “us” that we’re all a part of, “1” is the beginning of enough. All of us can do 1 thing.
We may feel insufficient in our efforts but this feeling can further induce helplessness and inertia and as a result we do not act. Or, we make our efforts so grand that we tire of our own ideas.
So, what if it was about doing 1 thing (versus nothing or all the things). Some examples include:
Read 1 article to understand…
Find 1 charity or cause that aligns with your values…
Take 1 walk keeping your heart & mind on another’s reality…
Share 1 meal with someone new to your country…
Volunteer 1 hour a week to…
Read (or listen to) 1 book to create new awareness…
Learn about 1 country’s history/ politics…
Talk to 1 person and learn their perspective…
Donate 1 dollar a day to…
Let 1 be enough as a practice to begin today.
PRACTICE 3: Collective Presence Practice
With all that is going on it is easy and tempting to numb out. It can be almost habitual to disconnect and to remain in our paralysis allowing despair to overwhelm us.
Can you choose instead to set aside two, or five or 10….15….30 minutes daily/ weekly/ monthly on the regular basis of your choosing to be present with our aching world?
Any amount of time with any degree of frequency is good! Being consciously in this time means presence in/with time versus numbness or disconnection in time.
Presence is about staying awake, conscious of what else is true in the world beyond our own day to day. It’s a small choice to notice it, feel it, be present with it. In your presence practice you can:
Light a candle and bringing an issue or person to mind
Pray, meditate
Journal
Have a conscious conversation with your kids, partner, neighbor
Place your hand on our heart
Be still
==========
Practice.
Allow yourself to move towards practice for our aching collective.
Allow your actions to be partial, insufficient, small.
But also see that micro shifts, practiced collectively are powerful.
Notice too that each micro act taken wears a new path.
I’m not sure our work will ever be “done” here, so to act is also a grand act of self-compassion, for your heart and my own that is aching too.
I hope this article has felt supportive and nurtured you, right where you are.
With love and gratitude for the practice you’re creating.
Susan xo