Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of Oct 3:

Clearly, I didn’t know what compassion was, but I knew what it was not. Compassion was not seeking revenge, holding a grudge, calling names, or screaming and throwing things in anger. Yet that was how I frequently behaved toward this person I claimed to love. For me, the beginning of learning compassion was to eliminate such behavior.

While I still have a hard time defining compassion, I think it starts with the recognition that I am dealing with a sick person who sometimes exhibits symptoms of a disease. I don’t have to take it personally when these symptoms, such as verbal abuse, appear, nor do I have the right to punish anyone for being sick.

I am a worthwhile human being. I don’t have to sit and take abuse. But I have no right to dish it out, either.

Today’s Reminder

I will spend more time with myself in this lifetime than with anyone else. Let me learn to be the kind of person I would like to have as a friend.

“He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have beautiful roses in his heart.” ~ S.R. Hole

END OF QUOTE—————————————

Compassion was once a slippery word, an idol others claimed to know. I did not. Codependence had buried that experience beneath confusion. What I knew, what I felt in my bones, was only what compassion was not.

It was not rage erupting to scorch every bridge.
It was not grudges gripping cold around my core.
It was not venom spat as names, hurled like stones, each syllable a chain.

That terrain I knew too well. It was familiar. It was desolation.

Growth, for me, is not swinging back. Growth is refusing to feed the cycle of abuse. Restraint is not weakness; it is control of the battlefield. When I refuse to strike back, I do not sanctify them—I sanctify myself.

Compassion is not bestowed. It is cultivated in the dirt of my own choices. It is not miracle. It is muscle. It grows in ordinary decisions: pausing instead of lashing, speaking without venom, walking away without cruelty.

In that refusal, I discover a new dignity — one not granted by family, faith, or foe, but forged in my refusal to be dragged down. I am a worthwhile human being. That worth is not granted by abusers, gods, or patriots. It is not earned by compliance, and it is not erased by rejection. It is mine.

That worth does not demand I sit passively in abuse. Nor does it give me license to mirror cruelty with cruelty. Retaliation is not freedom. It is contagion. My responsibility is sharper: to cultivate the kind of person I would myself choose as companion. This is Intelligent Self-Patriotism.

What does true compassion feel like in the body? It is not collapse. It is not retaliation. It is the tension of standing between. Strong spine, steady breath. I recognize sickness in others, but I do not let their infection excuse my own. Their disease is theirs. My containment is mine.

So I take inventory of my behavior before I dare judge another’s. That is Intelligence: guarding my Story against the poison of hypocrisy. I confess: I am learning compassion slowly, imperfectly, but sincerely — and sincerity, not speed, is what makes it real and lasting.

This entry was posted on October 3, 2025 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Courage to Change, healing, Journal, Life, love, mental-health, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.