Author unknown.

Approximately thirty-thousand world leaders attended the Environmental Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. When the Dalai Lama was scheduled to speak, the tent was full, and the audience was excited. He walked onto the stage, looked out at the people, and said, “Above all, have compassion.” He then left the stage. There was nothing else he needed to say. 

When we think of compassion, we think of being kind to street people or those who are physically handicapped in some way. I am gaining a new understanding of this virtue. That is, to have compassion for everyone in whatever challenges they might be facing at any moment in time. To look with love at the mother who is screaming at her child in exasperation is an act of compassion. We don’t know what hardships she might be facing in her life that she is taking out on the child. We don’t know what model she had for parenting or how she was treated as a child. We don’t know what loss she may have just experienced. We can only love her just as she is. 

We don’t know the pain of a grossly overweight person whose eating habits are out of control. We don’t know that she was brutally raped as a child. We don’t know how she was jostled at the hospital or interrogated by the police. We don’t know that she took three showers a day to wash away the guilt and the disgust. We don’t know the fear she has of getting close to anyone because her mother was embarrassed by her rape. We don’t know that her father couldn’t look her in the eye afterward because of his pity for her. We don’t know that she thought her parents hated her. We can only love her just as she is. 

We don’t know the terror of a top executive who loses his job and doesn’t know how to live differently than he has. We can’t imagine his fear of being judged by his peers or by his children. We can’t imagine the humiliation he might experience in looking for a job or the frustration of being “overqualified.” We don’t know what it’s like to live with such a high level of adrenalin, created to deal with all the stress and anxiety. We can only love him just as he is. 

We don’t know why our father was so demanding. We don’t know that he was ten times harder on himself than he was on us. We don’t know that he never felt loved by his mother and that nothing he ever did was good enough. We don’t know when he insisted that we do chores that he wanted us to be able to do anything so that we would never be without money. We don’t know why he worked so hard, and we never saw him. We don’t know what he felt inside when he saw his father’s house sold at auction for taxes during the Depression. We can’t imagine his pain or his opinion of himself when he went bankrupt. We can only love him just as he is. 

We don’t know why that woman is promiscuous and has so little respect for herself. We don’t know that she was sexually abused by her stepfather. We don’t know that he said he’d do it to her little sister if she told. We don’t know that when she finally said “no,” he raped her little sister. We don’t know why her mother didn’t believe her. We don’t know that she never felt safe, even in her own home. We don’t know that she just wants someone to love her back and take care of her. We can only love her just as she is. 

We don’t know why our boss is always so cranky. We don’t understand the challenge of running a small company or not having quite enough for payroll. We don’t know the disappointment when the salespeople don’t make their quotas, and the bills still have to be paid. We don’t know what it’s like to deal with government regulations when you’re just a little one-man operation. We don’t know that his wife just asked him for a divorce. We can only love him just as he is. 

We can’t imagine why our teacher is always so hard on us. We don’t know that her fourth-grade teacher told her she was stupid and would never amount anything. We don’t know how much she loves us and wants us to succeed. We don’t know that she’s been watching her brother being eaten away by cancer. We don’t know that she just gave her sister-in-law the money she had been saving for new shoes. We can only love her just as she is. 

We don’t understand why our daughter tried marijuana. We don’t know that she’s terrified of becoming an adult. We don’t know that she’s only seen us struggle and felt our unspoken fears. We don’t know that she experimented with sex because she didn’t feel loved. We don’t know that she’s afraid of relationships because her parents divorced when she was two. We don’t know that she’s afraid she’ll never see her father again. We can only love her just as she is. 

We don’t know why our son became so angry. We don’t know that he had just seen his best friend with stitches all over his face and that it was another friend who beat him. We don’t know that he’s afraid of making new friends or not being accepted because he doesn’t do drugs. We don’t know that he is afraid to choose because he might make the wrong choice. We don’t know that he doesn’t want the same things we wanted because he never saw us enjoy life. We don’t know that he loves us even more than we love him. We can only love him just as he is. 

We never know what another person is experiencing. They never know what we might be going through. All we can do is offer compassion to ourselves and others all the time and ask for it in return. Just love me exactly as I am.

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