Looking at the day as Endurance of Compassion, it leads me to the flip side of this energy that so many people seem to suffer from — Compassion Fatigue. Durfur, AIDS, Unemployment & Foreclosures, WTC Families, Homelessness, Beggars on the Subway and on the Streets, Vets with PTSD, Children Bullied into Suicide, Iraqi Victims of Roadside Bombs...the news is full to overflowing with suffering. How can we bear it all? How does the nurse in ER bear it day after day, year after year. So many medical personnel create a wall of professionalism because otherwise they would break in the face of such relentless suffering. And this can turn and become a prison, since when you turn off the faucet, it closes down all the water of emotion, making access to any difficult.
So many of us don't even experience the fatigue, rather we put up the compassion defense rather than feel overwhelmed by helplessness, or feel vulnerable ourselves by letting in the humanity we share with people in suffering.
We do this everytime we avert our eyes on the subway or the streets from the homeless.
How can we not only open to compassion and learn healthy boundaries for it, and then make sure it endures in the face of the endless suffering of the world, because in fact that suffering is endless.
This is where we must choose. We are limited, not divine. There is only so much each person can do. But we must choose to do something, and put our energy somewhere. And as Rabbi Tarfon taught:
"It is not your responsibility to finish the work
[of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it
either"
Choose a cause. Make it yours. And add your voice to the chorus of compassion. Lend your hands to do the work. When everyone is doing something, no matter how small, the messiah is here.
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