My face was pressed hard against the glass of the car window, quickly fogging over with my breath. The index finger of one hand fish-hooked the side of my lip, as my other hand pulled back on the skin on the side of my eye. I made low gurgling sounds as I stared down the man in the car besides us.
I do not have the slightest recollection of what the man's expression was. I stopped immediately. This was not because I felt ashamed by the action, but because my father had uttered one sentence in disapproving tone.
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Calmly, my father told me, "you never know what's eating people."
I did not know that this trivial memory of adolescent mischief would become the impetus for my entire life philosophy.
Back then, my understanding of the message was clear: I might get smacked in the head or make someone cry because they could have had a terrible day. I should always keep in mind I don't know what's going on in someone else's life. As time went on, I never really began to question it.
I had only heard a couple more times, always from my dad. It was something that his father had always said to him. In my mind it had always been intelligent advice, only slightly selfish in that I understood it to be saving myself grief.
Once I reached high school, my life started to change. I began to witness the effects of depression and crippling anxiety on my family. Mental illness came to exist as a recurring strain on us. As a result, I've witnessed the most beautiful people wish for death, imagine themselves as useless, and worse. It is an unfortunate reality that the most trivial of actions could mean for someone suffering so deeply to cast themselves into darkness. A simple smile, or a whisper just out of earshot could sincerely contribute to a choice between life and death.
When I began college I started to volunteer and mentor. I worked as orientation ambassador at Southern Connecticut, something I will widely praise until I die as the best decision I made as a college student. An orientation ambassador is a charismatic mentor figure who introduces incoming freshman to the college or university. They are a collection of leaders around the campus, who spend entire weeks with each other bonding and forging camaraderie.
I was profoundly inspired by the experience. However, though I was surrounded by charismatic, powerful, and talented people, I found there was depression and pain everywhere. Our training revealed that in every person there lay a story, mostly untold because people hardly ever give the time to listen. We all had fears and scars that marked our lives just as much as our triumphs and dreams.
As a young inconfident man working with people I looked up to, it had a profound influence on me. These were the people who stand in front of crowds and proclaim with unwavering faith that they could overcome their challenges. These were those who would go on to lead companies, rally organizations, and start their own businesses. The orientation leaders were the next generation of leaders.
And yet they all hurt so deeply. At times, they questioned who they were so thoroughly.
In understanding this reality, we came to understand our fears and pain were parallel, even sometimes identical. The scars were different, but the blades that did the cutting were very much the same: longing, loneliness, failure, heartbreak, death, sickness, and hate.
My soul was wracked by this. I was moved to tears by their honesty, but it also demonstrated to me that all of us suffer from very human baggage in one way or another. I could never have known from the outside what was behind eyes that sparked and shined the way theirs did.
The words of my father echoed back to me. "You never know what's eating people."
All of those years I had been following my father's advice, and I had not truly understood what I was doing. I wasn't supposed to give people patience because it would result just in benefits for myself. It was to show understanding that we all suffer. It was because all our hearts are heavy with stories. There is not one human out there who has not known pain. There are people out there who walk the edge of the darkness.
What my father was teaching me was compassion, wrapped in a deceptively simple statement. It was simply the action of listening.
It is a small kind of compassion and because it lives and grows in everyday interactions, it becomes pervasive. I had turned my ears on and saved my voice for words of affirmation or encouragement. I learned that through abstaining from criticism that it was my ego that was so often trying to cast the sum total of my experiences upon the life another. I learned it is exceedingly of higher importance to lend a shoulder and an ear than to pander on advice giving.
The idea that was once a seed grew to a proud oak, just underneath my nose. I had come to love people simply by letting myself listen. When I found I understood them, I came to love them. I came to understand that learning to accept other people's flaws lets me accept my own, and vice versa.
To understand there is pain everywhere in life is not to accept some forgone conclusion that the human race is doomed to suffering, but simply to see the reality that comes with the name human. We accept that we experience both warm, exuberant love and shattering heartbreak. They could not exist without each other. Without pain and loneliness, we could not ever know love for one another.
Perhaps though, the greatest lesson was the effect this had on my interactions with people. In growing to understand, the size of my heart grew larger. It allowed others I spent with to make mistakes, and to have bad days. In no longer mattered because I reminded myself of the story behind the curtain. The face behind the mask is always more important. The effect is revolutionary. People can be who they are and feel good about it.
The great lesson I learned from all of my loving friends is that we are all equalized by our experiences and our needs. The deepest of yearnings are shared. As a direct result of this shared current of emotions, we all can be reached through compassion. It can release us to be who are.
As Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Such is the reality of our time here. The most important things will not be material possessions or political affiliations. They will not be expensive things or long vacations. It will be feelings. It will be the long term happiness we achieve through connection with others. I am willing to venture that if you were close your eyes and imagine your happiest moment, you would be seeing faces. That warmth is what we all seek, and because of that I cannot allow myself to believe that mine is any more important than someone else's.
At every funeral, birth, and wedding we acknowledge this, but then we curiously return to the hustle and bustle of every day life focused more on our ice coffees and money than the richest achievements we can ever hope for: connecting with others.
This is my every day choice. I believe in cultural reverberations and the echo of one action. It is repeatedly explained as the ripple we can create in the pond. Well, this only achieves half the truth. I've found that each other person our ripple hits, also extends a ripple.
At the end of the day, the world is not black and white. Sometimes even with the greatest of intentions we can still find ourselves on the path towards the greater evil. Life is hard, and the decisions we face need not be faced alone. To open our hearts is more than to just be vulnerable. It allows for acceptance of the compassion we find ourselves wanting of every day.
That empathy is significant in that it will transcend itself in that its karmic return will release itself to us over time. It is the small pervasive changes to habit that will change a person, a community or even the world
I have found that when I choose that empathy and listen, my compassion grows. That is the energy that allows us to keep listening, to hear what songs sing and what brilliant blends of colors exist inside the eternally expressive soul of our friends. Somewhere inside, we all just want to be heard and appreciated. If we could all give that, every one of us, it would return to us, ten fold, out of sheer force of heart.
Wherever there is suffering, you can be sure that human hearts can heal it. This is my assertion, my iron faith. If it is in anything, that faith is in people.
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes of all time. It stays with me because I hold its principle to be the truth.
As Gandalf once spoke these kindly words:
“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."
