We've been exploring compassion recently, Karuṇā, and I was reflecting a bit some of how I've been conditioned to orient to suffering and our society has been conditioned to orient to suffering. And I had this memory, just from growing up, more of a long-term memory, but I seem to grow up in a societal conditioning, maybe culture, community, where you don't really acknowledge that you're sick. You're just supposed to get over it.

and have a good attitude and go on with your day and life. And so I would often, when I wasn't feeling well, I would just maintain the story, no, no, no, I'm fine. Really, I'm fine, and I would go about my life and do things as normal. And this one time when I was in college working at a grocery store, one day my boss actually sent me home from work.

As I came in and I was coughing and sneezing all over the place, and I probably had like the flu or something, I was from the outside, clearly very, very sick. And she's like, David, what are you doing here? I said, well, I'm here to work. She said, you're sick. I was like, no, no, no, I'm fine. Really, I'm fine. Everything's good. And then she's like, she got kind of firm, almost as if she was my mother or something.

And she kind of was in the right age breakdown. But she said, David, you are sick. You can't be here. You have to go home. And so then I went home. But I look back on that. It's like, wow, I was really sick and yet I was just denying suffering. And that was what I was conditioned to do, to pretend like suffering did not exist. And I see a similar thread with the toxic masculinity I grew up where something hard happened.

A friend moves away. They're mean to me. They don't want to hang out. Someone dies. The response I grew up with was just to say, oh, I'm good. It's fine. No, no, no, really, I'm fine. Sadness was not an acceptable option for me to display in the culture I grew up in. And we see this all around us in society, these messages, as if to say acknowledging suffering in mainstream society is a form of weakness.

And so being or having some backdrop of culture where they're quite invested in the denial of suffering. The first move, which we've been talking about this week, which is the first move of compassion, is just simply to acknowledge it. Like, hey, it's here. Suffering is here. It's real. It's happening. Pain is here. To not sugarcoat it, to not make excuses for it, to just acknowledge it. Here it is.

And for me, one teaching I found really helpful to add on to that, to really poke at the, well, it shouldn't be here, or I should be able to handle it, or whatever other story comes next, what is the teaching of what's sometimes called common humanity. And I first got exposed to this through Kristin Neff's self-compassion teachings, but it's deeply embedded in the spirit of the Buddhist tradition and other sources as well.

And essentially, amidst suffering and pain and the ability and willingness to just acknowledge it, the next part really attunes to how, hey, this is part of the human experience. This isn't a defect. We all go through this. It's not just, oh, poor me over here with this tough lot or, oh, that sad, sorry individual who has the flu. It's like, hey, we're all in this together. I'm not alone in my suffering.

You're not alone in your suffering. We're all connected in this struggle of being alive. In recent years, I've really loved Bodhipaksa's language. He just has this phrase he uses a lot, this difficult thing of being a person.

And I love that. And it rings through my mind sometimes. It's like, oh yeah, it's hard being a person. So much to manage and figure out and do and so many standards and expectations and chores and tasks. And it's the body that likes to fall apart and a mind that doesn't always cooperate.

Relationships that don't always flow the way you want them to. there's so little we're actually in control of around us in our life. And here we are having to interface with it. It's kind of hard. And of course, there's the voice in the room and in the mind that says, no, no, no, no, no. If you're good enough, it gets easy. Sure. Maybe that's there. The really competent one.

And yet the competent one will have its breakdowns too. It's hard to have to hold together a facade of competency all the time if you really look at it. And so we slow down amid suffering, if we can just acknowledge it. It's like, oh yeah, here it is. This is difficult. This isn't a mistake. This isn't a sign that I'm bad. It's just, it's hard being a person and I'm here with it.

I just care for myself, be kind to myself, be kind to others. Something that really gets in the way, maybe this a little bit, some of the other societal conditioning we have that you are worthy because you are above average at everything all the time. An exercise I got from Kristin Neff I really like in exploring the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem is that in our culture, self-esteem is really what's prized and that essentially we find our worth and value by being good at everything, above average.

And there's this really fun exercise. If you imagine there's three buckets of above average, about average, and below average, and you make a long list of things that you fall into, things like, okay, where do I put myself at focusing, at mental math, at parenting, at meditating, athletics, music, cooking, time management, emotional regulation, driving, hula hooping, so on and so on and so on. we implicitly, without realizing it, put our ability to feel love and care for ourselves and others quite often at, you should be above average, and that's how you get the love and care.

And what is being proposed with self-compassion is, well, firstly, can we just acknowledge we're all above average at some things, about average at others, and below average at other things? That's not a flaw or a defect, that's just reality. And in seeing that, can we just get off of that scale altogether and shift to the self-compassion thing that says, hey, it's hard being a person. Like we're not, we want to be really good at things and we're not.

Like we're just here and it's some things we're actually not very good at at all. And that's reality. And it's actually okay. Our love and our care is not dependent on getting above average. It's enough to just be here, to be a person. And so in seeing this for ourselves or others, it's like, oh yeah, it's hard to be a person. It's the same for all of us.

I hold you with care. That's it. That's the language of compassion. We have so many standards we apply on people, apply on ourselves, so many judgments. I can't believe they shop at that store, they wear that type of clothing, eat that type of food, drive in that way, that they drink more Red Bull than water. Or maybe the other side, wow, that person can sit in the lotus posture for two hours without moving.

They're really pretty incredible. This person is so suave. They've really figured it out. They have all the wealth. They have the status. They have the toys. They seem so composed. Such a great parent.

You know, these inherently set us up for some people who are worthy of love and some people who are not. And they can feel so real. You know what? At the end of the day, we're all going to grow old, get sick, lose everything that's dear to us, die, that's hard. And even those things that we look down upon people for, we don't know what's going on with them.

We don't know what they have on their plate, what their background and conditioning is. And chances are, if we had the same conditioning and we had the same circumstances, we'd probably make the same choices. This is the language of compassion. It's like, hey, it's hard being a person. Can we take ourselves off of our moral high grounds. I say, well, that's inappropriate. I say, I don't know.

It's hard. We're all trying to figure it out here. We all make mistakes. And when I speak to this, it's not as if I'm trying to say, oh, we all make mistakes. It's all good. Who cares? Let's all just be mean to each other because, you know, whatever. No, it's giving ourselves grace, giving others a little bit of grace. Like we're trying here. No one wants to be a jerk and maybe a very small amount of sociopaths or something wake up and say today, how can I maximize my jerkness and piss off as many people as possible?

I don't know. If you really tune in, that doesn't feel good. No one wants to do that. And they're heart of hearts, at least. They don't want to do that. But it's hard to be a person. It's hard to navigate these afflictive emotions within our own heart. It's hard to navigate a society that's pushing us down where there's not enough money, there's not enough resources. There's not enough systems that support us.

It's hard to exist in a world where the body decays and dies. This is hard. And if we can really bring this lens to all beings, to all people, it's like, hey, I don't know what's going on for you. This stuff is hard. I see the struggle. I get it. I'm there with you. I hold you with care. And within that, sure, there can be room for holding people accountable when there is real harm that's caused.

It's not, I think that's just a wrong turn to think this is making excuses in that way that you let repeated patterns of harm happen. But you can address the harmful actions without making the person a demon. You can have a lot of compassion and still have boundaries. And so this line, doing this difficult thing of being a person, this energy of common humanity, and I'll probably talk more about this at some point, but Kristin Neff's three lines, it's kind of a pithy way to summarize this or how it fits in.

She says, this is a moment of suffering. We all go through it. May I be kind to myself. We just sit in the energy of this difficult thing of being a person amidst the struggle with a heart of care. So we'll see you in a bit.