Let me explain some of the things that brought this to light for me.  This is quite a ramble and might seem to go off on a tangent, but at the end it should tie together the strands.

One was reading the comments where some people, quite a lot actually, had misunderstood what I meant and taken me to be intolerant of depressed people as opposed to the state of depression.  

What I said was how terrible it felt to think and feel as someone feeling depressed did, when I entered their world and experienced their thoughts.  Not how terrible it was to be around someone depressed, but how terrible it was to feel trapped in a depressive mindset.  I believe anyone in a state of depression must be best served by getting out of that state as soon as possible.  And that begins by being so intolerant of misery that you will change anything to get out of that state.  

Secondly, while this was playing out in the back of my mind there was coincidentally a local event that was generating the most media interest and buzz in our town since the Suffolk Strangler serial killer was on the loose.

Perfectionism And Compassion

The reason, Roy Keane, renowned ex-footballer and eternally controversial figure has just been appointed Ipswich Town F.C’s new Manager.  So there has been a lot of speculation as to how he will do.  Having been asked my opinion by people, I consider that he will do great initially, but will eventually end in turmoil.  

My reasoning.  I think it’s sad, but there are some people that are technically brilliant, but lack the ability to relate to people or accept them as they are.  And then that becomes a block to them achieving their goals.  Glenn Hoddle, another rumoured to be in line for the Ipswich job, is a classic example of a technically gifted Manager whose ego seemed to get in the way of being able to relate to his players.

Having read Roy Keane’s biography and interpreted the stories around him, it seems he has an unrelenting drive for perfection that will in time, prove impossible for players at a club such as Ipswich.  

Ipswich are by many standards a good team.  However they are not and will never be great in the sense AC Milan, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Liverpool are great.  They don’t have players of the calibre of Roy Keane, Kaka and Steven Gerrard.  They have, to be brutally honest, second and third tier players.  The kind that Roy played with for the Republic of Ireland.  

I read in his biography that many of the other International players were unhappy at the way that Keane passed the ball, thinking he hit it to them too hard for them to control easily.  You see, he was used to playing with people like Beckham and Giggs who could control a ball perfectly.  But when he dropped down a level to play for his country, his team-mates were less skilled.  And he was not prepared to drop his standards.  

Ultimately, this led to his acrimonious International retirement, when he stormed out of their World Cup bid because he felt the set up wasn’t professional enough.  

So there is a gap between Roy Keane and the previous manager Jim Magilton, a former club player who graduated to managing the club, that is not just about technical skill.  There’s something in the make-up of the person.  Something that drives them beyond the point where any normal human would give up.

What would drive any sane human to want to win a football match so much that they would risk their life by playing on with a broken neck as Bert Trautman did?

How can someone dig so deep that they can inspire a mediocre team playing the best in the world to come back from three goals down to win despite all the odds as Steven Gerrald did in the European Champions League final?

Or then follow that up the next year by picking himself up, barely able to walk from cramp and exhaustion to score two goals to win the FA cup?

Or how about Rocky Marciano, one of the smallest and lightest heavyweight Champions, but the only one to ever remain undefeated.  In one particular fight he was battered and bleeding so profusely that the Referee wanted to stop the fight, but after pleading agreed to give Marciano one more round in which he got up and knocked out his opponent? 

In other fields look at someone like Robert De Niro, who is so driven to perfectly portray the Character he plays that he takes on their personality and characteristics.  

Or someone like David Blaine who seems to push his body beyond all reasonable limits.

What drives and enables someone to want to and be able to dig into an extra level of resources and  to such extreme dedication to their art?

It’s clearly beyond the bounds of logic or ordinary enthusiasm.  It’s about becoming so gripped and consumed by a passion for something that you delve beyond the ordinary, and perhaps, into the zone of madness.

Ultimately therefore, I believe that Roy Keane, unless he has radically reconstructed his psychological DNA will not be able to tolerate his players inability to commit or dedicate themselves as wholly as he is.

So as I thought about this, with the comments and views people expressed in the back of my mind, I realised that there was a similar dynamic going on with me and the state of depression.

The Drive To Understand Life

Einstein said that he was driven, not by the love of physics or even science, but by the need to understand God’s thoughts.  I can understand that.  Probably since birth I have been driven by a similar need to understand.  So now as a result I am not too far away from 4 decades on this planet and have absorbed and consumed so much information, observation and experience on a relatively narrow focus that I see the world significantly differently than almost everyone else.

Some people refer to this as being more evolved or further along a path.  Someone even recently suggested that I was on a higher level to them.  And I know a lot of Author’s and Speakers try to create an aura around themselves to suggest that they are somehow further along a path.

But that’s not true.  

To think in those terms is only a trick aimed at putting oneself at the centre of the universe.  None of us are any more enlightened or evolved as a person than anyone else.  There is just life that can be experienced on many levels.  Which you experience depends on your perceptual focus.  But that does not in any sense make one person better than another.

Some of us have just focused so narrowly and for so long that we have a highly evolved and developed skill in a specific area.  It is one thing to master a domain specific skill.  But it is entirely another to take that skill from one narrowly focused domain to translate it and generalise it to everything in your life.

That is why there are many genuises, but so few in the class of Buddha, Lao Tsu and Jesus.

The only way to understand life, to know God’s thoughts, is by making sense of the patterns it leaves behind.  Having seen and considered Life, happiness and the way we live for so long and so deeply, I tend to see patterns easier and earlier than most people.

photo credit: nagillum

In other words I have an evolved skill to notice and point out some of the patterns of life.  There is just something hardwired in me that drives me to be more driven to do this than any normal sane person.  And so I cannot understand why other people are not equally driven to pursue such an understanding of life.   

When I have talked with people in what you might describe as a Coaching situation, it is almost always them that wants to end the call.  I am just getting going, but they say it is like their head is exploding with ideas and insights and they need to digest them.  It becomes uncomfortable to expand too much, too quickly. 

Now if there is a character trait that is the polar opposite of mine, it is that which the chronically depressed hold.  Depressed people have little interest in understanding Life, they generally just want the result of feeling happier without wanting to change and don’t see the correlation between the two.

So much like it will be hard for Roy Keane to accept less than total commitment to footballing excellence, it has been hard for me to understand that some people want a slower route to happiness.  

So lets tie up all these strands and see where compassion fits into all of this?

The Two Components of Compassion

My updated thoughts on compassion is that there are two parts to it.  

The first is wanting the best for the person.  With best being defined as achieving the highest possible level of attainment.   And the second is accepting that they reach that, if and when, they are ready.

It’s much like travelling to a certain destination.  You work out where you want to get to.  Then you travel to it at the speed that is most comfortable for you.  Some will travel  along at 100 miles an hour.  Others will poodle along at 20 mph.  It all depends on your comfort levels.  

And just as fast drivers get frustrated behind slow drivers and vice versa.  So too do people get frustrated at people travelling along their emotional paths at different speeds.  People such as myself and Roy Keane love our art and want everyone to see the beauty that they could achieve.  More than the person concerned actually wants or can conceive of for themselves.  And this leads us to want them to go faster than they are ready to go.

photo credit: Thowra_uk 

So there are two parts to compassion and along with these comes two pitfalls in being compassionate.

The first is in knowing people can do better and wanting them to go faster than they are comfortable doing so.  The second is (as we spoke about in the last post) in empathising so deeply with the person that you feel their pain and join them in believing the obstacles ahead are bigger than their capability.  And so they stay stuck.  

So maybe we need a balance between acceptance of the Individual’s comfort level and still wanting more for them.  What do you think?  Share your thoughts below.

But what I see, so often, are people wanting to shield others from the harshness and unfairness of the world.  Our society has developed a complex system of many interacting elements , including the welfare state, political correctness and charities, that is well meaning and intended to save people from the harshness of our world.  But it is often misguided and can actually hold back people’s development.

photo credit: Daquella manera 

Buddhists tell us that all of life is suffering.  To suffer is an unavoidable side effect of humanity.  We are human and so because we perceive from a place of attachment, we are bound to misperceive.  All suffering is rooted in misperception and so our suffering is a result of our inaccurate view and understanding of the world.

You only have to look at an optical illusion to realise how easily our eyes are fooled.  Equally our other senses can be just as flawed.  The world is completely illusory.  It appears to be one thing on the surface, but seen through different eyes or heard through different ears or felt through a different touch it changes.  

Life is to experiences, as a supermarket is to food.  It is possible to make thousands of dishes and recipes from the same basic raw ingredients, but each will have a very distinct end result.  

In the same way, our experience of life depends not on the objective reality, but on where we focus our attention and the recipe we use the raw ingredients around us to make.

Put differently, life is a story and some stories are heartwarming and inspiring, while others are cold and heartless.  Whichever story you tell, determines how you feel and so the quality of your life.

To summarise where we’ve got so far, life is suffering because we misperceive and how much we suffer depends on how deeply and which misperceptions we believe in.  So hopefully now, we can agree that we are fallible in our beliefs?

The obvious next step then is to understand how we misperceive.

Why We Don’t See The Truth 

I recall from my days studying Sociology that one of the founding Fathers of that field, Auguste Comte, believed that Sociologists were uniquely placed to understand and govern society.  This really encapsulates the problem with perception.

We see, hear, feel, smell and taste the world through our bodily senses.  And so we identify with our physical sense of self enormously, often completely.  Emotionally, we desperately need to feel a sense of belonging, a sense that we matter, that we make a difference and that people care about us.  So our ego’s job is to make a story out of the raw materials all around us that places us at the centre of the universe.

As a result, Psychologist’s think all of life is based around what we think.  Nutritionist’s believe we are what we eat.  Physician’s believe we are a machine that they can engineer.  Likewise, our view of what is valuable and important is based on placing what attributes we hold at the centre of the universe.  

About 400 years ago Galileo Galilei was given an ulitmatum; recant his observation that the world was not the centre of the universe or be put to death for blasphemy.  Stephen Hawking says that, “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.”  Because whilst every piece of physical data led to the logical conclusion that we were at the centre of the universe, Galileo went beyond perception to discern the truth.  

It is this impersonal scientific approach of hypothesise, test and refine, over and over again, that can free us from the prison of perception.

So why was Galileo such a threat to the religion of his time and place?  

Because if he was right and people believed him, the Guardians of the Church would have to change their viewpoint and so no longer hold their source of power, status and authority.   

So now, let’s relate this to the topic of depression.  

When people make up, not consciously of course, their interpretation of what life is and why it matters, they value certain attributes.  Businesses strategise and call this a Unique Selling Proposition.  It’s the reason why you buy a $50 item from one Vendor over another at $45 or $75.  Individual’s do this too, but mostly without realising it.  Without a personal USP, how would you ever feel that someone would be interested in you or care about you?

So if someone is slim and attractive, they will value physical beauty and see someone overweight as negligent in not caring about their appearance.  If fat or unattractive they will look at physical beauty as superficial and a sign of narcissism.

photo credit: Chesi – Fotos CC 

If they are rich, they will value the acquisition of wealth and believe it to be a sign of status, intelligence and positive attributes.  If poor they may see the rich as selfish, manipulative and possibly criminal.

If clever, they will highlight the importance of intelligence, believing it makes them better.  If less bright, they may look for absent-minded Professors or talk up the value of practicality and common sense.

If they believe themselves to be spiritually evolved, they may downplay worldly concerns and materialism to highlight their other worldliness.  If believing they lack spirituality they might see it as airy fairy nonsense and an escape from the realities of the here and now. 

In other words, people have to find a way of bolstering their self worth by either seeing themselves as positive, or by downplaying the importance of others.  

If they are sick and/or depressed they may make suffering and persecution the way in which they get to stand out from the crowd.

So whenever you identify and attach yourself to a certain attribute and reality, and the world shows you that this is only a misperception, it feels much like someone is rocking your world and shifting your sense of importance from the centre of the world to the periphery.  It feels like someone is trying to eliminate you.  Therefore it feels as if you must fight to stand your ground or you will no longer matter or exist even.

photo credit: epSos.de 

No plant will ever hide or shield itself from the light, but that is exactly what the depressed do.  They shrink and avoid contact with the truth.  For they fear that if the truth were revealed, they would be revealed as worthless, or evil, and cast out and therefore they must hide from it.  That was the point of my post on the secret behind stress and depression.

Yet it is only the truth that will ever save them from the prison of their own mind. 

So now we need to examine what is compassion?

What Is Compassion?

Superficially compassion seems to mean understanding that the Individual has had a hard time or is lacking the development of certain skills and qualities.  Therefore we should be understanding of the difficulties and obstacles they face and expect less of them.  In short, it seems we should accept, it is unreasonable to expect that they can ever be as happy or well adjusted as we can be.  

To me, that’s just another way of slanting the universe to put ourselves at the centre and so make ourselves feel superior.  It is the patronising attitude of many Idealists and Politicians, that in essence say,

‘I, who am more capable than you, will do this for you, because you cannot do it for yourself’. 

To me, that is not truly compassion.  The person is trapped in a prison of illusions and to agree with their misperceptions is to make their illusions seem more real and so bind them even further in their self made prison.  

photo credit: __pereztonella 

I do not care where you have been, what you have done, or where you are right this minute.   I believe that all of us are equal and despite different starting places, I believe in the power of the human spirit to transcend any, and all, circumstances.  I believe know you can be happier and live to a far greater extent than you have demonstrated up to now.  

No-one needs to hide behind excuses.  They hide only from the fullness of what they could be.

Yes, it is harder for some people than others.  But I did not make it harder for those people.  The forces of life, or if you prefer God, did.  Therefore there must be some greater purpose behind the disparity in starting points than we see.  The world we encounter is our interaction with Life, or God.  Therefore for another to mediate between that connection is to distance the Individual from their source.

I share the truth as I see it.  Obviously it is inherently flawed and biased through my own perceptions, but only words nonetheless.  They have no power to hurt, in and of themselves.  So if they cause offence, as did Galileo’s it is only because they threaten a viewpoint you are attached to.

My writings are for the purpose of sharing quicker ways to live with less stress and more happily.  I can only say the steps that need to be taken or the dynamics that hold us back.  I cannot change what must be done in order to reach a place of happiness because someone feels it is too hard for them to achieve.  I can only share the quickest and easiest path that I can see.  That does not change because of  the person wishing the world were different than it is.

My intention is to point out the light, that someone might become aware of it and so have the option to move towards it when they are ready to.  And if that makes me seem offensive, uncaring, unfair and unreasonable then so be it.  

To me that is true compassion.

But of course, as with all things it is a temporary view based on perceptions that may be flawed to value my perspective other others.  So what do you think? 

Share your comments and together we can develop a better understanding and definition of compassion than we have used to date.