Finding Compassion -A Smile-Kind Word-A Hug -Don DeForge, VMD Silver Sands Veterinary

Finding Compassion

A Smile - A Kind Word - A Hug

Donald H. DeForge, VMD

Silver Sands Veterinary Center

Thomas Merton

"And genuine love is a personal revolution—it transforms our entire life. Real love takes your ideas, your desires, and your actions and welds them together in one experience and one living reality which is a new you."--Thomas Merton

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“Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.” – Anna Quindlen

Thomas Merton on Love and Compassion:

"When we are leading a life based on real love (or mature love), we are living life in a way that deals with fear and stress differently than a life where our love is not yet mature or genuine. Because a life of genuine love is texturally different than a way of life based on immediate stress reduction and appeasing our fears and constantly seeking security. When we truly love another and those around us (and ourselves as well), we think and see the world differently, we don’t see the world from the standpoint merely of the self and what’s in it for me and what we like and dislike; rather, we see and engage the world in broader terms, from a larger set of considerations and a much larger perspective. And in doing so, we are motivated to take on ourselves—our smaller self, our own narcissism and pettiness; we are motivated to take on what’s worst in us—and to try heroically and courageously to push past our (neurotic/unrealistic/overgeneralized) fears and limitations and biases and character flaws (shortfalls in the virtues) that lead us to make some pretty bad and unloving decisions–including decisions we make in order to lessen the stress in our lives no matter what the cost and consequence to those around us now and in the future and to ourselves down the road. When we truly love—when we’re motivated by real love—we don’t let ourselves get away with sketchy fear-based, self-centered, me v the world, win-lose, immediate gratification thinking and decision-making. What’s best in us has a say. And what what’s best in us has to say usually involves us taking on ourselves and our fears and trying to deal with our stresses and stressors in a more mature and noble way and to extend or stretch ourselves for the sake of those we claim to love.

When we say that we love, but we refuse to take on what’s worst in ourselves and address it and give it up, then we do not love, and we are only obfuscating matter with our words and lying to ourself and others.

But when we say that we love and we do confront ourselves—what’s worst and weakest in ourselves—and we’re willing to heroically and courageously sacrifice or override that part of ourselves that lives in fear and we’re willing to make the stretch and extend ourselves beyond that part of ourselves and instead live from what’s best and most loving in ourselves, then we are indeed loving another in deed and not word only. Our talk is not cheap, and we are not living in our head; instead we are embodying our highest values and aspirations and we are making a real change.

“God is love, and whoever abides in love remains in God and God in him. By living in this way, love is brought to perfection among us, and we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because as He is, so too are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment (and with loss and the past), and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. If anyone says, “I love God,” but does not love his brother, that person is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” – 1 John 4:16-18, 20, (my parenthetical)

The truth is that this whole “package” concept of life and love and is self-defeating; it actually undermines the development of real love. To consider love merely as a matter of need and fulfillment, as something which works itself out in a cool and calculating deal, is to miss the whole point of love—and of life itself.

To regard love as merely a need to be fulfilled, as something to get, reflects and immature and regressive and stunted view of life and other people.

The plain truth is that love is not a matter of getting, and certainly not a matter of always getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being happy and satisfied and secure, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. To love you have to climb out of the cradle where everything is “getting,” and grow up to the maturity of giving, and without nearly as much concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is often self-sacrifice. Love is not marketing, it is a form of worship, reverence, appreciation, and gratitude.

In reality, love is a positive force, a transcendent spiritual power or motivation. It is, in fact, the deepest creative and courageous power in human nature. Love flowers spiritually in response to a deep encounter with another person. It is a living appreciation of life as value and as a gift. Love has its own wisdom, its own science, its own art, its own way of exploring the inner depths of life in the mystery of the loved person. Love knows, understands, and meets the demands of life insofar as it responds with warmth, abandon, surrender.

When people truly love each other, they experience far more than just a mutual need for each other’s company and consolation. In—or through and because of—their relationship with each other they become different people: they become more than their everyday selves; they become more alive, more understanding, more abiding, more enduring, more patient, more courageous. They become better people. They are made over into new beings. They are transformed by the power of their love.

Love is the revelation of our deepest person potential and meaning and value and identity.

But this revelation or revealing remains impossible as long as we are the prisoner to our own egoism and fears.

I simply cannot find myself in myself: only in another. My true meaning and worth are shown to me not by my own estimate of myself, but in the eyes of the one who loves me; the one who loves me as I am, with my faults and limitations, revealing to me the truth that even these faults and limitations cannot destroy my worth in their eyes; that I am therefore still valuable and lovable as a person in spite of my shortcomings, in spite of the imperfections of my exterior “package.”

As we deepen in love, the package becomes less and less important until it becomes unimportant altogether. What matters is this infinitely precious message which we can discover only in our love for another person.

This mutual revelation of two persons in their deepest secret is something entirely private. And it cannot be communicated to anyone else until it is embodied in the child who becomes, as it were, a living word, a physical manifestation of their shared secret.

Love is a transforming and redeeming power of almost mystical intensity which endows the lovers with qualities and capacities they never dreamed they could embody.

Where do these qualities come from?

From the enhancement of life itself, deepened, intensified, elevated, strengthened, and spiritualized by love. Love is not only a special way of being alive, it is the perfection of life. He who loves is more alive and more real than he was when he did not love.

That is perhaps one of the reasons why love seems dangerous: the lover finds in himself too many new powers, too many new insights. Life looks completely different to him, all his values change. What seemed worthwhile before has become trivial; what seemed impossible before has become effortless and easy. When a person is undergoing that kind of inner cataclysm, anything might happen. And thank God, it does happen! The world would not be worth much if it didn’t.

The power of genuine love is so deep and so strong that it cannot be deflected from its true aim even by the silliest of wrong ideas. When love is alive and mature in a person, it does not matter if the person has a false idea of himself and of life: love will guide him according to its own inner truth and will correct his ideas in spite of himself.

The trouble, however, is that our wrong ideas may prevent love from growing and maturing in our lives.

Once we love, our love can change our thinking. But until then, wrong thinking can inhibit love."  Thomas Merton

Commentary by Dr. DeForge 11March2016

As I enter my 4th decade of animal care as a servant of the Human-Animal Bond, I daily reflect on the words of Thomas Merton:

"To love you have to climb out of the cradle where everything is “getting,” and grow up to the maturity of giving, and without nearly as much concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is often self-sacrifice. Love is not marketing, it is a form of worship, reverence, appreciation, and gratitude." 

I meet pet advocates that truly love their companions and are wonderful advocates of the Human-Animal Bond.  I also meet and greet those who live in a world of anxiety, pain, and self love that do not understand the meaning of the words-"loving" and "compassion!"  These individuals take and never give; they speak negatively; they live negatively; and miss the wonder of each moment in which we are allowed to take one more breath.  

It is harder in 2016 to find compassion in this self-serving negative world enveloped in ego -i.e. the me-myself-and I society.  Society has become anxiety driven with "self" becoming first and "helping others" following a distant tenth on the daily list of "things to do!"

Each decade that I have practiced has shown a decline in human values. There is a generalized degradation of positive values in family; child care; and the nurturing of the Human-Animal Bond.  Merton states it this way: "The trouble, however, is that our wrong ideas may prevent love from growing and maturing in our lives."  He goes on to say: "Love is not only a special way of being alive, it is the perfection of life. He who loves is more alive and more real than he was when he did not love." 

I do not feel worthy to believe that Merton lives in me....but I do believe my strong belief in compassion is centered on Merton's belief that we must help and try to change those who do not understand the power of love.  Love is a perfection of life and only when we cherish it; share it; bring it to our schools and our work places; as well as to our social gatherings can we be re-fueled with a belief that we can make the world a better place. That is the compassion that encourages me each day to help and never stop caring.

In love and compassion---Dr. Don DeForge---Silver Sands Veterinary Center

Dr. DeForge welcomes comments to his blogs at DonDeForge100@gmail.com

11March2016