November: Compassion Is A Language
As November strolled in, along came darkness and the cool weather announced the definite change.
Change is here, similar to how it came last year and how it will come again the following year. Seasons are learned in the first few years of elementary school, yet here I am a 31 year old gal, standing outside wondering where the sun went. You’d think I was experiencing autumn for the first time. However, I’m once again standing in the cold, 4pm young night, knowing that it will only get colder and darker.
It was Alok who spoke so beautifully about how so many speak hate, not knowing that it is their pain speaking the loudest. Using a wound as a mouth piece rather than a heart or a mind leads to more pain. Because hurt people, hurt people. And as these gashes bleed, where is compassion? If you have never heard them speak, please do. Alok Vaid- Menon speaks the way I strive to one day, with elegance, force, and beauty. But most of all, with love.
So much of my October was surrounded by communication and compassion. It was a growth I knew I needed but the amount of growth surprised me. I thought I was nailing it, but my conflict averse heart was met with discomfort. I took a weekly workshop on Nonviolent Communication last month, every virtual meeting invigorated and scared me.
NVC is a method of communication that focuses on empathy, compassion, and understanding to build connection and resolve conflict with others. NVC is based on the idea that everyone has the capacity for compassion and was developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg back in the 60’s.
I am on board for all of it, but voicing my needs is more foreign than Mandarin to me.
Beyond the philosophy and relearning how to speak, I’ve learned that to hold compassion and conflict together while vital, takes a lot of balls, for lack of a better word. Vulnerability is terrifying, you can witness a person of power disassembling the world around him to never face it.
So today I ask us all to fail, be cringe, but to try. Compassion for yourself, your friends, the cranky, disillusioned, the loved, and the lost. We are all needing something in one aspect or another, but we need each other most.
November gets cold, and darker than before, let's hold each other closer than before. Until the sun rises again.
