Nuance

Compassion and humility are indeed closely related and needs must be balanced with gentility and with kindness. Both for oneself and those who are going to be affected by one's presence. (I use the word 'one' not to be posh but because to say 'your' can have an accusative ring. And to say 'my' makes all I say sound closed in and closed off from usefulness for other's) So how is our 'oneness with each other?Our empathy? Our sympathy?Our accessibility?Can we relate? St Francis or just plain 'Frank' if we like, for holiness may be a problem for each of us. The word 'saint'either needs humbling down or raising to a more common human aspiration realization or vulnerable tender hardheartedness perhaps? What do you think?(here I felt the inclusiveness was to acknowledge your otherness to my singular yet common humanity.For whilst not one of us is an island entire of itself nevertheless we are each different (but even that when absorbed 'I' feel to be our common human feature viv a vis we are each a person it is always 'personal' and our unique yet common vulnerability our individuality means we each of us can experience the despair of 'no on understands 'me' and R.D.Laing points out well in Knots that 'I experience you and you experience me but I will never experience your experience of me. And you will never experience my experience of you. Before I explore this seeming digression further I feel the need to return to the blog's title and the first line of its intended thread. Finessing Compassion and Humility. I fear that when I /one / you i.e any of us separated or collective individuals seek to show compassion we may fail to 'seek to understand rather than seek to be understood'Frank's words to us saint or not he seems to have something to shift 'one's' potentially arrogant stance Thus we impose the concept and belief that we belong to the group whose thread of thought and action is correct. (very often assuming other's agree simply because they for self protection from tyranny choose to stay behind the barricades.) Mmmm and I fear the over humble position of the leading idea and general ambiance needs no adjustment just to be acquiescent and polite to a leader , who they have not noticed is flawed and becoming h#armful left uncontested unchecked and not adjustable.(Always has to be right and has lost the gumption and lubricant and buffer of humour and its springy elastic flexible compassion and humility and common decency and humanity. I love that Eric Berne in the Games people play ' offered the traffic light identity of each or our egos as parent adult and child which really can be caricatured as arrogant superiority common decency and unruly and Thomas Harris M.D or just plain 'Tom' or St Tom if we collectively choose creted this model of positions I'm ok you're ok (adult) I'm okay you're not okay(parent) I'm not okay your'e ok(victim-child)) We're not okay(despondent children who think their adults are damaged and the situation is hopeless) I feel Fritz Perls offered us something better I am not in this world to live up(or down) to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up(or down ) to mine if we do that's lovely if we do not its just too bad that line is where compassion self assessment and common courtesy become useful I would also recommend getting hold of the book on Practical Medical Ethics by Dr David Seedhouse for the chapter on self fulfilling prophecies i.e when a doctor doesn't listen just as when Jeremy Hunt doesn't listen I illustrated it but I would also plead as offered by Sue Jeffers on behalf of the pictures there 'if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly' a sort of PUNK response akin to Fritz's pearls of willful freedom And music ..never trust an inflexible metronome such gnomes are mechanical discompassionate accurate only in their Nazi march lacking natures rests for a breath here or there i think a little arrhythmia is more common human a feature than a programmable heart beat