Patient Compassion

If we want to set our lives right and find peace,
It is not the tolerant attitude of others
That will do it for us.
It will come about, rather, by our learning
How to show compassion to them.
If we try to avoid this hard struggle of compassion,
By referring a withdrawn and solitary life,
We will simply drag our unhealed obsessions
Into solitude with us.
We might well have hidden them.
We certainly will not have eliminated them.
If we do not seek liberation from our obsessions,
Then becoming more withdrawn and less social
May even make us more blind to them
Since it can mask them.

John Cassian

It is hard to care for people. It is hard to be compassionate at times. We ask ourselves, “How can they not get this?”  But we forget that as a leader, we have seen this situation 100 times to the once or twice that the follower now faces.

We have a tendency to move into the ivory tower and let someone else deal with it. It is natural, sure, but we should remember that what is natural is usually wrong. Parents do not have to teach children how to do wrong – it is natural. Instead we teach children how to do right.

In the same way, we must teach ourselves how to have compassion for those who follow and to remember that our 100 times experience is supposed to be used for them – not used to beat them with the “why don’t you get it” stick.