A few days ago, a very good friend of mine talked to me through WhatsApp and sent me a voice note crying, feeling frustrated and bad about herself, because she was a witness of an act of violence against a young woman and she didn’t do anything to help the woman.
Risk or help?
The minute I heard her voice, I felt the same feeling of frustration. What happened was that a young woman was being mistreated by her husband and nobody did anything to help, not even my friend because she didn’t know how to react. So, she saw the fight and didn’t understand why she didn’t act. She was angry, frustrated with herself and sad about the young woman. My friend asked me: what would I do in a similar situation? Honestly, I didn’t know what to tell her, maybe I would try doing something, trying to find some help, but the fact is, this happens every day, and we have no control over it. Sometimes trying to help can make things worse, and we can put ourselves at a risk.
I started to think what I could possibly do to help that woman, to help my friend, to help anybody if I do not have control over the situation. First, I would need to see the situation from a distance, not getting involved or trying to make justice at that moment. I can start by sending loving kindness and compassion to the young woman and the person who was acting in an abusive way. Sometimes we need to be neutral in situations like this not to add more reasons to fight.
We all are going through something
Loving kindness and compassion mean to be gentle to ourselves and to others, no matter what kind of experiences we are going through. Loving kindness and compassion refer to unconditional love and the motivation for others to be happy, to be able to accept the different circumstances that happened in life with calmness, not being overwhelmed by them.
Sending loving kindness to another person helps to deal in a better way with their current experience. We all are energy so we can send love energy to someone who is suffering and help them in their process. Like me, I was sending loving kindness to my friend, not to be so hard on herself, and to the young woman – sending her love energy to make her pain lighter, to make her feel that she wasn’t alone, to help her find peace in some way.
Practicing sending loving kindness and compassion will help us develop patience and understanding, first – accepting the situation, second – trying to act with calmness and not reacting by impulse and third – not suffering, because there is no point to suffer if we have no control over the situation. I want to think in a free way, a loving way, realizing that we all are going through something and we need to start acting differently to build a peaceful society.
Thanks to this practice, we will become more empathetic with ourselves and others. Actually, it makes me realize that we have more power than we thought, that sharing loving kindness and compassion is always a great way to spread peace to others, and we have that power within us.
In the frequency of peace and joy
So, how we can spread loving kindness and compassion? First, we can think about something that gave us a feeling of happiness and love like a baby or a puppy. Can you feel love for them? Or maybe remember a place where you feel love and try to reproduce that feeling. It is important that the feeling becomes real because that is what we are going to send to another person. In this case, I saw a young woman being at peace, being embraced with a big energy of love, I could feel that energy in me, and that calmed my mind, so I left behind all those feelings of frustration, because I could see through the act of violence, I could see a woman being protected and loved.
Practicing loving kindness and compassion will calm our mind and body, it will bring us peace and joy. And by practicing this we will help rather than fight against something because by sending love energy we are creating more love and peace, we are vibrating in this frequency, and we will integrate this in the way we act and treat ourselves and others.
If you want to practice loving kindness and compassion, you can start here.
Photo credits: Unsplash