Find Compassion

There has been something sitting at the back of my mind, softly prodding all month as I speak to people, talk about things that are not important. So much of my life, whether I spend it blogging about things that may or may not reshape the world or even about little musings that make me feel a whole universe broad.

The truth is, I spend a great deal of my time angry, I spend a great deal of my time voicing outrage, speaking out to ridicule people with whom I don't agree. It doesn't bother me. In fact, I find a great deal of joy in voicing those opinions, but that's not what's been nagging me.

I hear people talk all of the time about unconditional love, as if it were the most elegant phenomenon they had ever come to understand. I don't agree with that assessment.

Do not look for love in everything, do not soften yourself to the world perpetually. Show it love when love is what it needs, but when there is something that you see as wrong, do not hesitate to wave a finger at it and shriek at the top of your lungs. Create satyr, voice distaste, and then, from time to time, find compassion.

Do not love unconditionally. There are plenty of things in the world worth hating. Hate poverty. Hate starvation. Hate disease. Ridicule irrationality and speak out against the people who propagate it.

At the end of all of that, find compassion for those who suffer as a result. Allow those emotions to be directed properly and to subside. I, from time to time, ridicule Creationists and people who believe in faith healing and all of these other things. Above all, though, I feel compassion for those people, because they suffer for their errors.

I feel compassion for homophobes who will never recognize the legitimacy and the elegance of those relationships. I feel compassion for the racists who will never understand genetics because they insist on differentiating between people.

Do not love unconditionally. Do not feel guilty about hate. Just find compassion.