Increasing Compassion

"We are suffering a kind of collective hypnosis, a cultural trance that prevents us from seeing things they way they really are." said William Irwin Thompson.  It’s so ironic, I'm at my fathers new house and I always look forward to the visit and then when I get here I get numbed  by the television and his pot smoking.  I'm not into drama's anymore so the time spent here feels like I have to participate in order to spend time with him.  It's so hard to be with people (like my parents) who are so "hypnotized" and I will not compromise my own beliefs.

And then I read the assignment.... "How might you help a woman recover who must leave the closet into which she was born and raised?" “How would you expect her to react?”

When I read this assignment earlier I was not thinking of myself...but now I am. How might I react?  It depresses me.  A part of me honestly feels like it dies inside when I have to spend my time in ways that my husband and I take pride in leaving behind. What's worse is we fall into the old trap again b/c we don't want to upset anyone, or offend anyone while we're here by not wanting to watch TV, or not eat white bread and sugar.  So we try to be “true” as we can but all I can think about is leaving so that I can surround myself with my natural world. 

In the meantime... we sleep outside in my father's back yard (in a tent) and take notice of the birds and rain and hills.  I noticed when we are all outside together we are well.  When we have to go to the mall or watch TV we don't connect.  So, how might I react? By giving in sometimes to connect, yet I am not really connecting at all. I’m numbing out because I am tired of picking my battles and I'm only 35.  Most of our family have settled for TV life and I think their anger is because of this.  I think I am angry about this. I don't know if I should be angry or numb out.

I am a person that good feelings in nature when I listen to the stellar jays laugh at us and when my daughter delights in running and running and running through the wet, cold dewy grass with her bare feet in the mornings. I get good feeling in nature when I wake to the sounds of birds, wind and rain. I’d be depressed and
angry if I lost this connection. I am reminded of the preciousness of nature’s enchanting ways. They re-educate the part of me that is still addicted to television.

Charley’s email said he’d let the woman placed in the closet know that it was not her fault that she was place there. This has enhanced my compassion towards my father and his wife for their choice in lifestyle.