Decompiling Oppression #78
Sam McVeety
As I wrap up another year, I find myself turning again to the topic of gratitude, and the ways it steadies and evolves over time. I'm deeply grateful for feedback from all of you who have found meaning in this space, where every entry is a leap of faith. As I look forward to 2023 and contemplate future projects, this feedback gives me the faith and grounding to trust myself to start to answer crucial questions like: who might this work be serving; who might it create meaning for?
While contemplating gratitude, I find myself wanting to pair it with the idea with compassion. Over the past few months, we've started a practice at home on cultivating compassion, replaying daily interactions to examine where compassion might play a role (particularly when a situation is challenging). "What would a more compassionate response to that be?" my husband asks. I pause (and occasionally grimace) as I consider. Every time, it underscores that this truly is a practice, one that takes time and dedication.
If the word "compassion" comes from "suffering together", I like to think that it also has room for "trying" and "growing" together. When it comes to mending even a small corner of our interwoven communities, I feel gratitude for all the people who are trying and growing, especially since that usually means not having all the answers, and still finding the bravery to try. I see you.
As compassion and gratitude braid together in my life, I seek to feel them in a way that creates belonging rather than distance. When I ask myself what I'm grateful for, I find that there are two roads before me. Down one, I think about all the suffering that is not-me, and the "cheap" gratitude of not experiencing that suffering (I am grateful I am not hungry, not unsheltered, ...). Down the other is the fuller gratitude of appreciating those things that bring me joy, not in contrast to lacking, but innately. The joy of partnership and community, of learning and curiosity.
I find this first type of gratitude creating distance: I am grateful for the thing that I have that you do not. It is the gratitude of guilt and scarcity. It trips up my tongue as I hesitate to share a story about a trip or adventure with a given audience (am I bragging; is this inappropriate?), because I am coming from a material lens of have or have-not. Instead, I seek to transform this into the second type of gratitude: of abundance, grounding myself in the joy of experience itself, and trusting that the joy is the story, and that it will be heard.
So, too, with compassion. Down one road is the performative compassion of pity: I see your suffering, but I don't truly believe that your suffering is mine; that circumstance and luck are what separates us, rather than worthiness and merit. When I am asked what a more compassionate response might look like, I find myself wandering this fraught territory far too often. (And, can I be compassionate with myself as I try to grow?) I might convince myself that your actions are coming from a place of suffering, but I don't see myself in you, because I'm different from you.
Down the other road is the compassion of belonging, of common humanity, a compassion that sees how we are all suffering, and trying. Part of me finds this kind of compassion terrifying; it means letting go of simple explanations and comforting moral binaries. Crucially, though, it doesn't mean that I let go of trying.
I've been thinking a lot about how compassion and accountability for harm can coexist. I know I don't have all the answers; I might not have any of them. I do believe that, more often than not, coercion and punishment compound and amplify harm. At best, they transfer or concentrate that harm in a different body, without ever getting to the root of that harm. And. Sometimes stopping or preventing harm is urgent; compassion for someone causing harm shouldn't outweigh compassion for someone experiencing harm.
Perhaps when it comes to addressing harm, the crucial ingredient is curiosity: compassionate accountability means never settling for a simple story ("they're crazy") or accepting the failure of an attempted intervention ("they don't want to change'), without asking why. That's what I plan to try, anyway. Compassion doesn't mean I can't continuously offer and invite new ways of seeing, that might alleviate the suffering of both perpetrators and survivors. In fact, compassion demands that I try. Because I know we are all trying, and I am grateful for it.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: When is it hardest for you to feel compassion for yourself?
Communal: What are you most grateful for about your community?
Solidarity: Support the Freedom Project and its work to dismantle the institution of mass incarceration and heal its traumatic effects on individuals directly impacted by incarceration, on their loved ones, and on our community.
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