Day of Compassion

I choose Thursday as my ‘Day of Compassion’ because I knew I would be driving home, and driving is my least compassionate time.  I don’t have trouble showing compassion in my face to face interactions, but put me behind the wheel of a car and everyone is an inconvenience. 

I decided that I would show compassion by greeting everyone I passed with a smile today.  Peoples' reactions were interesting.  Some looked surprised but smiled back.  Some would look at me and just look away – no smile back.  Typically I would race to judgment about someone not being friendly, so my compassion had to shift.  I decided that I would accept whatever reaction I got without judgment.  I realized that expecting people to reciprocate changed the process from me being compassionate for others to me caring about myself and whether people were friendly to me or not.

A long time ago I had read something that said you should give a gift to everyone you meet even if the gift is simply saying, “God bless you.”  So I made an effort to say, “God bless you” (in my head so they didn’t think I was a weirdo) to everyone who crossed my path.  I forgot a few times, but for the most part I remembered. 

My drive home was actually the least stressful drive I’ve had yet.  The first thing that happened was a pedestrian jay walking across the street on my way out of town.   I started to think sarcastically, “Take your time.  I have all day,” but caught myself and changed my thinking to, “No, seriously – take your time.  I’m not in that big of a hurry.”  Of course I ran into slow traffic like usual, but I just went with the flow.  I didn’t rant and rave about how stupid they were for going 10 miles under the speed limit.  I just decided to relax and pass when/if I got the chance.  The whole process made my drive so much more pleasant.

I promised my daughter that I would help her through a financial crisis she was having, so when I got home I headed over to her house.  It was hard for me not to just bail her out and give her a lecture on being more responsible with her money, blah, blah, blah.  I wanted to help her without enabling her which is hard for me because I don’t want to see her struggle.  So, I sat down with her and had her figure out what she was behind on and had her come up with a plan to get caught up.  She wrote out a budget, and then wrote on her calendar what days her paydays are and exactly what bills are coming out of each pay day.  She then hung it up on the fridge so it would always be visible to her.  She called and arranged a payment schedule to get caught up on some of her bills.  I was really proud of her because she did it all herself.  I was just sitting next to her encouraging her.  

What I really learned from my day of compassion is that I make a lot of mindless comments that aren’t compassionate.  Like in the car when I realized the Starbucks guy messed up my order and said, “You idiot.”  I had to catch myself and change it to, “it’s ok, I’ve messed things up before, too.”