Compassion is a really tough thing to teach somebody.  To come along side someone’s frustration, to enter into another’s pain is hard to teach because the main thing you have to teach is to be sincere.  As humans, we are generally pretty sincere about our own frustrations, fear and our anger and disgust.  However, its difficult to enter into an aspect of a relationship sincerely that is uncomfortable.

Its hard to get someone else’s frustration or sadness or hurt.  And to try to get it, means that we have to consider something that makes us frustrated or sad or causes us pain.  

Un. Comfortable.

So while  it’s almost impossible to be sincere in compassion about why the five year old is upset because the barbie’s hair do is coming apart, or why the fourteen year old is having a melt down because they can’t find the right dress for a dance, it is possible to find a way to identify with the frustration they are feeling and be compassionate about….not the issue….the frustration.

Frustration, anger, hurt, fear are universal.  We can all identify with those things.  It’s in the identifying with another that we can find a sincere compassion.  In marriage.  In raising kids.  In all relationships.

Its not the issue that is at stake. Its not about saying the right thing.  Or getting to the bottom of the problem.

It’s the human relationship.