Self-Compassion:
I sit overlooking a lake. Summer has completely enveloped the valley. The wind takes periodic breaths through an open door. Coffee steams beside me. Chocolate remnants wedge between my taste buds and teeth.
The day lays before me untrammelled by obligations. Yet, I feel a tinge of dissatisfaction. This then makes me feel angry. Angry that I suffer - with seemingly no reason to suffer.
Recently psychological research suggest self-compassion is associated with greater happiness, optimism, life satisfaction and motivation; as well as lower levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and fear of failure (see https://self-compassion.org/ for full citations of associated literature).
Psychometrics suggest three constructs within self-compassion that differentiates it from other modes of introspection:
I sit on a stiff couch and sniffle as I straighten my spine. With the pace of my breath, I wade in a pool of suffering. Mindful. I hate it. Mindfully. Hating it. I return to my breath and enter a hopscotch between being suffering and seeing suffering. Step 1: Mindfulness: check… I think?
Step 2: Kindness? Here I freeze to think. Introspect with the sense to circumvent this need for self-kindness. 72% Dark Ghana chocolate distilled from beans a continent away slowly melts between my fingertips. I can feel hot coffee distilled from beans spanning another set of continents trickles through my internal organs and pumping caffeine into my brain vein. A location and view that has been seen more on Instagram than in real life unfurls before me. My current suffering evades Step 2 because it seems not to deserve kindness. It is met instead with discipline and a little scoff. Self-criticism seeks to staccato the suffering only to accent the pain.
Okay well let’s skip to step 3… Try to find the shared humanity in the current state of being. Well, I guess suffering is universal to the human condition. This pain I feel is felt, and has been felt, by millions of living beings. And this flavour of suffering – that which seems absent of seeming cause – is even more universal. It transcends all boundaries and categories. To suffer internally without external reason is to awaken to an existential reality that connects us all. Life is permeated with moments of dissatisfaction.
“Life is suffering?”
A voice of mockery suddenly echoes within the walls of my mind. Self-criticism stumbles through the door like a drunkard who’s looking to pick a fight.
“Existentialism? Buddhism? Eat pray, love and BOO HOO.”
The harsh critic is also well-versed in the world’s philosophies and he proffers a rebuttal:
“Don’t they say that life is suffering because of attachment? What are you attached to that is causing you to suffer amongst all this pleasure and beauty?”
In the absence of acceptance, the logical mind enters a tug-of-war between understanding and admonishment….
It has taken me a while to find the light streaming through the cracks of my Self-Criticism. I couldn’t find it in the warmth of coffee, luxury of chocolate or the breath-taking lakes of New Zealand. It is hard to offer spacious kindness because it goes against every instinct of judgement. An instinct that has allowed me to understand the segment the world.
In brief moments I have felt a kindness that offers space without the gravity of wanting change. A kindness which like the earth mother can hold and cradle even the dark of the night. A space which is outfitted with snakes, insects and deathly cold.
When an aspect of myself is associated with pain, it becomes hard to integrate kindness. It’s like holding a hot stone that feels like it an unabating fire even though you know the stone will soon cool in the palm of your hands. While confronting kindness, I have discovered that my Self-Criticism is confused and at odds with Self-Kindness.
