One Thing All Truly Compassionate People Have in Common
What it is might surprise you
Anyone who has read my work on Medium will know I am obsessed with ways to overcome feelings of personal powerlessness and trauma.
I wrote here about the German Romanian writer, Herta Muller, who created literature out of necessity in a brutal totalitarian regime in order to find her voice.
I followed with an article about how the post-WWII German writer, Gunter Grass, saved the his language from the ways it had been weaponized by Nazi propaganda. His seminal masterpiece, The Tin Drum, reinvigorated not only the German language, but the novel itself.
I believe that the written word can help individuals, societies, and even whole countries confront trauma and heal wounds.
This empowering nature of literature is why it is so often banned in countries that rely on keeping their citizens in a perpetual state of fear and powerlessness.
An unlikely hero in the fight against trauma
I hadn’t thought much about the entertainer Russell Brand since he disappeared from the Hollywood scene a decade (or was it two?) ago. I knew that he had descended into the almost farcical and cyclical “shadowy valley” of celebrity addiction and rehab.
Imagine my surprise when the reliably perspicacious culture writer for the Atlantic, James Parker, described Brand’s podcast as “surprisingly brainy”.
Curious, I began listening to “Under the Skin” in my work truck. I became enthralled. I knew that he’d always been a comic, but I realized that nowadays he is much more than that. Here was a man whose ideology transcended the tired ‘pick-a-team’ partisanship of neoliberal vs. conservative media.
He has a genius with language, rolling out rapid-fire extemporaneous observations on metaphysics, society, economics, and culture, which he then punctuates with a hilarious one-liner before following it up with a hug for his guest.
To put it another way, he is like the captain of a carnival ride taking his listener and guest through a seething landscape wherein thought and ideas emerge inchoate to be hammered out in fervid consultation into two microphones.
Two of his episodes in particular have lingered with me.
The first was an interview with the trauma psychologist, Gabor Mate, which I hope to explore later.
The second was an interview with the overnight TedTalk sensation and best-selling author, Dr. Brené Brown.
(What) Brené Brown learned about compassion
Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where, according to her webpage, she has “spent the last two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy”.
One study in particular that she discussed with Brand focused on how people in service (clergy, social workers, chaplains, etc.) were able to sustain compassion in order to do their work.
She had thought that the common thread would be a spiritual practice of some sort. The truth was anything but.
The one thing in common everyone in that line of work had was ironclad boundaries.
Not empathy, not good will, not religious conviction, not…
As someone who has always had difficulty establishing boundaries, her revelations were a welcome, if not jaw-dropping, surprise.
Doing the best you can
Dr. Brown went on to talk about a workshop she had conducted for Episcopalian priests. She posed the question of how many of them believed that the people they were trying to help were doing the best they could to help themselves.
Most confessed they harbored doubts.
Brown, who is a Christian, then asked them: “What if God told you that the people you work with are?”
Two of the priests in the group were husband and wife. They had given the same name when asked the question: a local reprobate who, in their estimation, squandered all charity. Both had become resentful of this person.
After Dr. Brown confronted them with their resentment, however, they realized they had to make a choice in order to maintain their integrity.
- They could either stop helping that person, or
- Do so without judgment and/or expectation
In other words, they needed to establish healthy boundaries.
Brown had arrived at the axiom that “we are all doing the best we can” from a personal experience. She’d once asked the question of a female family member, who had replied emphatically: “Hell no!” The woman then went on to chastise all the new moms who didn’t breastfeed their children for the required amount of time. How could they have had a child without planning around this important developmental need!
Guess who hadn’t been able to breastfeed her child because of her demanding professional and academic life? None other than Brené Brown.
And guess what popped into her mind right at the moment.
I was doing the best I could.
Final Thoughts
We all need to be compassionate. We all need to help one another. People are suffering. The world is burning. God’s creatures are disappearing. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.
But if you can’t establish proper boundaries when working to help others, then you’re setting yourself up for an inevitable burn out.
Trust me, I know.
