3-31 How Can I Help?

My mom is the most compassionate person I know. Helping others is “not something [she] really thinks about, merely the instinctive response of [her] open heart” (5). Her “effort [is] so natural …” that she gets “… self-conscious [when you] make something of it” (5). I could offer you a laundry list of her great deeds, but I think that would be disrespectful to her. She doesn’t do things for recognition or praise; she does it because she believes it’s genuinely the right thing to do. She once told me that when she stops helping others, then others will stop helping her. I remember when she allowed her co-worker’s “troubled” 16 year old to come live with us for a few months. The girl- Jessica- came from a super conservative family- home schooling, no TV, no telephone, no friends over, women cook and clean, children write an essay if you break a rule, etc. Anyway, she ended up getting pregnant. Her dad wanted her gone, and her mother- not the type to stand up for her children I suppose- asked my mom to take Jessica in. of course she said yes, and, within the second week, Jessica and my “life savings” was gone.


The equivalent of "my life savings".

I was devastated and inconsolable- especially since my mom didn’t vowel to avenge this crime, but instead told me that Jessica probably needed it more than I did.


a inconsolable child... what i probably looked like... except this girl has blond hair.

Later she elaborated on this point, and gave me my first introduction to the idea of karma: “when we join together in spirit, action comes more effortlessly, and everybody ends up nourished” (5).


the image i have in my head when i think of karma

I don’t fully understand where my mom’s generosity comes from. I never felt like that was a conversation I could have with her. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable with my observations of her generosity, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed that I didn’t have that same bounteous well of compassion. However, I’ve recently learned that my mom’s “experience of separateness guides [her] to appropriate understanding and support” (22). She knows what it’s like to be in a place like Jessica. That doesn’t mean she is condoning her actions; rather she understands why she did what she did. Jessica was really young and scared, and she didn’t have a thorough understanding of what her options were. I’ve recently found myself following after my mother’s example. Though our actions are not comparable I am very aware of the people that I chose to extend my compassion to, and this is because “from [the] body of common experience, much care is born” (22). I’m not suggesting that I only feel sympathy for certain people- I am a surprisingly sympathetic person. However, what I feel is much different from what I do; this difference probably exists for a lot of people. My mom on the other hand doesn’t differentiate between who she feels deserves her generosity. This is because of “[her] impulse to do all [she] can to relieve… another’s pain…” (55). I know my mom’s generous nature has forced her to confront “a pain so excruciating that it [has] threatened the very fabric of [her being], shattered [her] tenuously held faith, and cast [her] into deepest despair” (56). What I don’t know is whether she has ever been able to recover from it. I appreciate what she did, but I don’t appreciate what it did to her. However, I think that her experience of “a tragedy that [broke her] heart” (56) enables her to determine “how much pain to let in, and whose” (56) better than almost anyone else.