To Suffer Together

In the original Latin, the word compassion literally means “to suffer with” or “to suffer together”. To have compassion is to remember and acknowledge that we are all suffering together. All of us our sons and daughters of Divine, Eternal beings and all of us are filled with the yearning and desire and calling and anxiety to be perfect, complete, whole, powerful, and yet all of us have been given bodies and minds and faculties that do not measure up to our hopes and visions. This is the greatest source of our suffering and we are all in it together. We all are convinced that our lives in particular and the world in general can be more perfect than they are and yet we are not strong enough or smart enough or fast enough or good enough to ever come close to that perfection that we imagine. And it hurts. It hurts to see how we can be better, to want to be better, to do everything in our power to in fact be better and yet to stumble and fall and fail. And we get up and we try again and get knocked down again. And we get up and we try again and we get knocked down again. All of us do this. We all want to be better and stronger and wiser and more innately decent than we are, or than we even have the capacity to be in this life. And yet so many of us, instead of acknowledging the common struggle that we all have, instead of applauding and cheering on the efforts of those around us, we stand in judgment and condemnation and heap coals of scorn on the burning ashes of each other’s hopes and dreams, hoping to God that everyone else is too distracted by their own misery to glance our way and notice our failures. We are all suffering together. We all fall short and feel the pains of our failures and we can pretend that we our unique in our suffering and that no one else could possibly feel as miserable as we do, or we can spend our time and energy pretending that we alone are immune to the frailties and imperfections of the human race and that we are doing just fine, better than fine, and that everyone else is being stupid and weak and failing on purpose. Or we can have compassion on others and compassion on ourselves and not point the finger of scorn when someone fails in much the same way that we are failing, and not beat ourselves up too badly when we make the same mistakes that everyone else is also making right now. We want to be perfect and we should struggle and fight, shed blood and tears, and waste and wear out our whole souls in the pursuit of perfection, but the pursuit of perfection is all we can hope for in this life. And as alone as we may feel, as singular and unique and special as the hell that we are living through may be, there is One, at least, who suffers with us. Christ has the ultimate compassion because He suffered with each of us, with all of us. And if He was willing to slog through this imperfect world with us, filled with the same desire that we and the world around us should be and become perfect, then maybe we can be willing to suffer and acknowledge the suffering of others as we all stumble imperfectly towards perfection and glory.