Compassion

A friend posted on her facebook post the other day about wearing a safety pin, to show that you are a safe person for everyone, that you respect everyone, no matter their beliefs.

A person asked her if she could wear one, though she voted for Trump.

There was a discussion about how the safety pin represented inclusivity, and the rights of everyone.

The woman said, “I voted for Trump because he represents inclusivity to me.”

I so wanted to write this woman and ask her, lovingly, to please explain her perspective. Nothing  I heard from Trump ever talked about inclusivity, but that is what she heard.

I contemplated the woman’s perspective, and what came to me was compassion. Compassion because she felt excluded. I know that feeling. It doesn’t matter that I am an upper middle class, heterosexual,white female. There are many people who ridicule me because, to them, my beliefs are ‘out there’, and because I believe that animals and nature have the same rights as people. But no one wants to feel excluded because of their beliefs and no one should ever have to.

It is one of the things I love about being in nature. It feels inclusive. I can feel the oneness of all of us whenever I am in the wild. Nature doesn’t care about your sexual orientation, your political beliefs, how much or how little money you have. There is no judgment there about what you have or haven’t done. And that’s what we all want, really. None of us want to be judged and we all want to be heard.

This is one of the most divisive elections I have seen in my 49 years. But it doesn’t have to be. A stranger reminded me, we are all here for the same thing. To be allowed to be who we are. We all just have different ways of getting it. And why shouldn’t we, none of us has walked in the same shoes.

This is why we each have our favorite sports team, or hobby, and belong to groups, isn’t it? We want to feel we have a community, that we are part of something bigger than ourselves and our families? We want to have a way of connecting with others.

I think my community is the community of compassion.

Want to join?!