• Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Founder and Director

This week my family lost our dog, Izze, who’d arrived as a puppy and lived with us for well over fourteen years.  Our kids grew up with this dog, and in many ways, so did we.   
 
The morning after he died, I went out for my usual walk with our other dog Theo. It was a stunning morning, the field sunlit and sparkling from an overnight rain.  Theo, who usually races off and back again, stayed just a few feet away, or so close I could walk with my hand on his head. All through that first walk with just one dog, I was teary.
 
What I was feeling, of course, was grief, a space in my sky ringed with love.
 
We’d been flooded with messages the night before, as family and friends affirmed our sadness, wished us all peace. Even those who don’t share our family’s attachment to dogs, or had recently suffered life-changing loss, who couldn’t be blamed for thinking, Really?  A dog?  To a person, they offered compassion.  
 
Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, and spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, defines compassion as, “the wish to see others free from suffering.”[i]   Joining moral and spiritual leaders throughout the course of human history, he also asserts that compassion is necessary, that humanity cannot survive without it.
 
It seems to me the reason is clear: To not have compassion is to wish suffering on others. That will never result in more people thriving or ever more peace.  
 
So, I try to practice compassion, aware of the myth that practice makes perfect. Practice is merely trying and failing, and trying again. Practice makes change, and change is all I can hope for.
 
It’s not hard to practice compassion for people like me, or for those of whom I’m not afraid.  But when I perceive threats to the shape of my life, my ability to work, be housed and healthy, walk safely outside of my home, and care for the people I love?  When I see threats to the moral and civic artifacts – like legal rights, laws, and learning – that make all that possible well beyond me?
 
I’ll be honest; practicing compassion in the face of any of that is really, really hard. No wonder the Dalai Lama calls compassion, “a sign of strength.”[ii]
 
This week I’ve considered compassionate practice on a continuum, from soft to steely. Offered to those I love and care about, in whose beliefs and actions I perceive no threat, compassion is hardly an effort.  The more threatening our differences, the steelier my compassion must become.
 
Steely compassion may seem like an oxymoron, because soft compassion is often mistaken for the only kind.  Steely compassion is not so feel-good, and it’s what is required when faced with threats, and for those who do wish suffering on others, for those who act on that wish.

Compassion can hold determined resistance to violence, greed, and repression. It does not require “playing nice.”  There is room for rage in a world of compassion. But if in my resistance and even my rage I do not stop at wishing aloud for the suffering of others, or worse, if I act on that wish – then I am part of the problem.
 
Please don’t get me wrong, I believe in the power of soft compassion; it’s getting me through this week, and has held me through far sharper griefs. And if I choose to align myself with a more thriving and peaceful world, then neglecting to practice steely compassion is a luxury I cannot afford

[i] From his 1989 Nobel prize speech.

[ii] For example, in this talk.