Judgmental Thoughts...and Practicing Compassion

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I have long believed that we pretty much construct the world we live in from our thoughts.  I can't blame people brought up in an objective materialist tradition for thinking that sounds kind of "New Age-y." It makes a certain amount of sense that if you mistrust people, they will mistrust you in return, and vice versa. But constructing your entire reality? Bah! OK. It's just a theory and I'm testing it through personal observation.

So, here's one experiment:
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - Dalai Lama
For a while I have been working on compassion by noticing my negative thoughts about others and...well...substituting alternate thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts about others that I definitely would not want to share. Certain situations are really fertile for nasty thoughts: trying to find a parking space; in line in the grocery store; in the changing room of Target...So, I try to hear these little Tourette's-like blurps and tell myself "Hey, she wouldn't be yelling at her kid like that if her life weren't really stressful," or, "I admit I made an equally dumb parking maneuver yesterday and nearly got killed."

What an unbearable Pollyanna I am.

The thing is, I find as I (heel draggingly) work to become more compassionate to others, I also find I am more compassionate to myself. It's as if, each time I thought something heartless and nasty about someone else, it was a little subconscious time bomb aimed at myself:

  • If she looks so terrible in those pants, I must go around looking pretty stupid half the time.
  • If that guy is too stupid to use a cell phone while driving, what was I yesterday when I was driving halfway on the shoulder?
Instead, when I think, "I'm sure he didn't mean to cut me off like that, everyone has off days," I give myself permission to have off days, too.

So, I think I have found a concrete connection between being compassionate to others and being happy oneself. Brick by brick, I'm constructing my reality.

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