Our different life experiences

Our different life experiences inform our opinions - some quite passionate - in life. But it is our compassion which defines our humanity. We may not have had the experience, but someone else has - can we feel compassion for them, and understand their passionate outcry? Our different life experiences inform our opinions, and that is a beautiful thing. It is when we forget that the person next to us or across from us or across the sea has a life story full of experiences that are equally as valid that we stop growing. That's like reading one book when you are very young and going through your whole life thinking you are informed.


It is a tumultuous time in history. We are on the cusp of the Aquarian Age and everything is changing. The way we think, how we value things, everything is changing. And we can choose the uproar, the passionate refusal to acknowledge anyone else's truth but our own, or we can learn some compassion and survive.


If your child has never been denied health insurance, if you are not on the verge of losing your home to overwhelming cost of health care, if you have not lost someone because they could not afford health insurance, then you cannot in all honesty know both sides of the story. If my trust has been broken in the past and yours hasn't, and you see me and shake your head at my lack of trust, you can't in all honesty know both sides of the story. What makes us unique creatures on this planet is our ability to empathize and exercise compassion. What helps us grow in our humanity is the consciousness of everyone else's story too.


What we make out of life is our choice. I am not going to put down people I respect because their opinion is different than mine, and neither will I exchange my own very real experience for a truth they have born without my experience. It's a tough time and it calls for the grace to stay in your truth with kindness, to share without rancor and to be open to the fact that every person's story is a little different and equally as valid as your own.

But what I will do is choose to exercise compassion. I will choose to remember that "the other person is me." I will choose to remember that we are all One. I will choose to drop judgment and practice love. I will choose to believe that good is made possible by good and not by rancor, anger, judgment, cruelty, close-mindedness or hatred. I will choose goodness, kindness and love.


Because that choice is a powerful choice and a powerful catalyst for how we interact with each other as humans and whether we survive the times. We can choose peace over war, love over hate and compassion over judgment. It's your choice.


Blessings.
- Darshan


© 2009 Darshan F Jessop