Compassion is a Privilege

As I embark upon a new era of my writing, which I have been doing virtually filterlessly on the web since 1995, I am noticing a very specific form of anxiety emerging. There seems to be an imaginary foray in my experience of writing here on Medium, a place through which I have become familiar with some of the most impressive and forward thinking writers I know of online.

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” – Steve Furtick

I think of myself as, for lack of a better description, a bit of an impostor, writing here. I am white, I am American, I am conventionally attractive, slender, have a charismatic personality and good social skills. I am also being squeezed dry by the class gap, starved by capitalism, preyed on by sexism and rape culture, suffer the stigma of suicidal ideology and had a really, really fucked up childhood.

What I speak of on my Medium account is the cumulation of years worth of intense personal development, years worth of mortifying mistakes and lessons, baked into bread crumbs intended to connect with those who are following in steps I’ve already taken.

I’ve had a lot of support, a lot of time, and a lot of rich opportunity to come to a place of compassion for myself around my wounds and the unfortunate circumstances of my life, to come out the other side and write what I do here. I’ve had the freedom to change my career, work flexible hours, employ myself, and focus my being on my healing as well as the healing of others.

Sometimes, even with all that fertility in my environment, I am not the highest self I present here in my writing. Maybe even most of the time, when life has gotten particularly rough; which as an impoverished female artist with an extensive abuse history, is often the case. I have the skills and the infrastructure to find my compassion around that, too.

This compassion is a privilege.

Which is not to say my life is easy, or my work is frivolous; it is not, and this dying mismanaged planet would be utterly doomed without people like me.

But it is to say that I recognize that one of the reasons I am uncomfortable here is that I come from a place of privilege in the voice I am choosing to use in my writing. The work I have done to cultivate that voice, to resist a world paradigm which wants to shut me up and tear me down, was done via opportunity and choices that many people don’t have, or are simply not ready to turn their universe upside down to make.

“I think when we engage in compassion-baiting, we re-harden our hearts. Maybe it’s because we fear being touched by the raw pain of others, so we ask them to temper it for us.” — 5 Big Problems With Compassion-Baiting, by Katie Loncke

Being authentically compassionate in our society, particularly online, requires intense vulnerability and exposure. To accept that I have wisdom to give, and to be posting it in a place where the things I say may actually be read, has required a tremendous amount of courage. It is much easier for me to present my socially critical views in the shape of a fingerpoint of blame and anger, of a me versus you, and I still do plenty of that in other places. Compassion is a muscle I have had to constantly and intentionally strengthen, and I am not alone in the circumstances which made that reality so.

Medium is where I am practicing the art of critiquing myself and society with a inclusive and understanding nod, rather than a slew of cuss words and punch in the face. It is where my stances on social justice and my inner work can join hands to speak to the potential of the good in us rather than simply pointing out the bad. It is where I encourage others in their commitments to do the same. And it is, very much, my privilege, to be here.