(A brief self-reflection for the start of Lent, surrounding the question of modern compassion as discussed in this article.)
Is there a way to fast from despair?
At the beginning of this season that Western Christianity calls Lent, it seems that our world is already fasting. Parts of it are abstaining from justice; others have given up basic human rights. And still other sectors have simply learned to say “no” to any language or space that leaves room for complexity.
Unlike a more traditional abstinence, giving up these things has not caused any inconvenience to those fasting. Instead, each empty space seems to fuel the appetite for more such vacuums, echoing across the world.
It is easy to feel caught between such knowledge and the work of compassion.
Whatever one does for the least of these will inevitably not be enough. There is no place of safety, there is no haven of justice, there is no future of redress or sanctuary. Almost every boundaried place on earth is now leaning towards a period of exclusionary self-protection. The result of working for change will be, at best, a slowing of these gears.
And yet.
The clearest intellectual conclusion is despair. It is a sane assessment, and it does offer a sort of insulation from anger and helplessness. It is a palliative measure. And it is a certain sort of comfort.
But beyond that, it is not helpful. It is certainly not helpful to anyone beyond myself. What was I saying about periods of exclusionary self-protection, again? They are not made with compassion in mind.
And if despair is the reflex, compassion is the nerve it protects. Compassion – as examined in this excellent article on “compassion fatigue” – has been mapped in various ways. I feel the cleanest-hitting definition is that offered by Nussbaum, who frames a key tenet of compassion as the quality of “similar possibilities.” Or, as the article restates, “the belief that it could be you.”
In terms of self-protection: placing “it could be you” in conversation with most current civic and national issues reveals the flimsiness of the rights and reassurances with which we normally pad our days.
To give up despair is to give up a hedge against compassion. That is, rather than understand pain through the (realistic) contingency that no alleviating effort will ever be enough, compassion’s call is simply to work with the urgency of protecting one’s self.
It is, in its way, an inversion of the Golden Rule: forestall for others what you would not have done unto you.
So having acknowledged that, I shall try to set despair on the deepest shelf in the pantry, alongside my shots and chocolate and blind spots. (Actually, never mind, the chocolate at least is staying.)
It is a conscious process to retrain one’s protective reflex. It is a point of soreness, as a matter of course. Often it is much more, a source of outright grief and pain. It is uncomfortable, first, to engage with things I would rather avoid, and it is also painful to look at everything I hold dear and superimpose erasure, as surely experienced by others who might have been me.
This season is well-known as a time of heading into deserts. But this year, it seems like the call is to head toward the jungle-like spaces, prepared to join the scrap over questions of what this world is willing to give up.
Skeleton At The Feast 