I want to add a slight twist after the last couple of posts.  In the last post on compassion and depression, I gave my idea of a compassionate response to depression.  However as I have pondered on the subject I have begun to think that maybe I’ve been missing something.  And I think I might know what that thing is.

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.

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