Compassion Fail or Fatigue

#028 When your Metta ups and leaves

Last week I wrote about my heroic rescue of the bees in the swimming pool, highlighting my astounding levels of compassion and kindness. Everything wants to be loved, I cooed, and here I am rescuing the bees..!

Of course, it wasn’t quite like that, but I’m laughing at my fall from grace today, with a story that I’m going to share with you, after this brief interlude inviting any new readers to subscribe to my mailing list!

My first time

We always remember our first time. This week marked my first experience of a tropical storm. I knew that it was coming, and thought I was prepared and had what I needed, until catching anxiety at the supermarket.

The man in the car beside mine slowly transferred a trolley load of water bottles into the boot of his car. I typed out a panicky message.

‘Should I be buying water?’, I asked a work colleague.

Had I miscalculated the risk, and neglected to prepare sufficiently? I felt that gut wrenching feeling of going to a party and realising you didn’t bring the right thing. Social shame is unpleasant but recoverable. A lack of drinking water, potentially less so. But I remembered the pandemic panic buying, and tried to find solidity and trust in my decision making.

Might this turn into a big storm?, I wondered. I experienced an island of calm, reassuring myself that the predictions were this was not going to escalate into a full hurricane on Grand Cayman, and there were two huge bottles of water in the apartment, should I need them. Still, I had no idea what to expect. Did anyone?

Life experience gives us our personal working models of the world, templates that help us predict the likely behaviour of people or things, and to respond accordingly. We typically adapt to get the best out of a situation based on our working models, but they are not always consistent with what is actually happening in the world. My template for ‘tropical storm’, developed as I went through it.

I am hoping to share the article that I’ve written about the storm, but I need a bit of time to reflect on it. With my desk positioned in front of the window, I could see the pool slowly fill up with rain water. At night I listened to the wind rattling the storm shutters beside my head, whipping the sea into a fury. Thoughts become more wild at night, as do the sounds, and it is a relief when light shines on what is really there.

It’s hard to move to an island not really knowing anyone. Whilst it can be exciting, developing new templates for almost everything you can imagine, and adding a tropical storm to the mix is emotionally draining. By Thursday evening the previously soothing sound of the waves had transformed into an angry noise that I couldn’t escape. I was exhausted by its constant roar. I found peace in sleep.

The calm after the storm

This morning the storm had finally passed us, and the sea was sounding much softer. What had been a gentle sloping beach to the sea is now a precariously thin walkway with a sheer drop. I am exaggerating a little, but the shoreline has certainly been transformed by the storm waves.

The temperature must’ve dropped whilst the storm was with us, and I never noticed, but it’s back with a vengeance. I have a reasonably short walk to my car each morning, and when I opened the door and sat down today, a face in the rear view mirror glistened back at me. This is my Caribbean Glow Up, I laughed to myself!

A picture of the pool post tropical storm Helene

After a long hot day, I was desperate to get in the pool tonight, and was pleased that the leaves and airborne detritus had been cleaned out. I pulled on my costume and went down for a swim. There were leaves all around the pool, and more than I expected in it, but I didn’t care. I put my foot on the first step and took a gasp.

The water was freezing!

What wizardry had happened here??? How was it that the water was suddenly like an ice bath?! Never before had I had cause to pause before getting into this pool. I wanted so desperately to ease in and enjoy the calming effect of a swim, but it was much colder than I was expecting. As with most things the solution was to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and before I knew it, I was in the pool and swimming.

Leaves as big as lily pads floated beside me, and I felt the waves of calm flowing over me. This was exactly what I needed. I swum a lap, and another, intending to squeeze in as many laps as I could before heading out to meet a friend. We’d planned to go for a drink as the sun set, and the sun doesn’t wait for an insatiable swimmer.

Not again..!

Suddenly a dark blob in the pool caught my eye. I looked and looked away. I pretended there was nothing there, and kept swimming.

After a lap, I saw another dark blob beside me, and once again I looked, then pretended nothing was there.

I swam another lap, pretending not to see the blobs floating beside me. On the next lap I swum they were not there. Genuinely. And then I saw one, and swam past. And then none, and none and none. But I knew that they were somewhere.

Suddenly I realised that I had failed my Metta test. So much for my wise compassion!

Can you guess what the blobs were?

Not bees.

Nor frogs.

Cockroaches.

What would you have done?

You may know Metta meditation, or know it as the loving kindness meditation. This is a beautiful practice where you sit and send loving, friendly wishes to the world in circles of closeness. You start with yourself, and move onto a friend, a neutral person that you don’t know very well, and someone you find difficult, before extending loving kindness out to all animals and beings. The aim is to develop compassion, and a loving attitude to everyone and everything in the world. I couldn’t muster up compassion for the ‘roaches.

Everything is sometimes hard.

Compassion is sometimes a thing you have to mine deeply for!

Whilst the bees easily evoked my compassion and care, I had zero compassion for these crunchy creatures. Instead, I felt repulsion, and I didn’t even check whether they were alive, let alone make an effort to take them to the poolside.

‘They’re dead anyway’, I thought to myself, ‘they don’t need my care.’

Swim, swim, swim.

In my defence, I didn’t actively harm these cockroaches, and they were not in the pool due to my actions, yet my lack of compassion was in stark contrast to my previous swim state of mind.

I didn’t want the cockroaches to suffer, but neither could I contemplate repeating the leaf rescue. I didn’t want them to crawl on me, or even to move, and twitch an antennae.

Does Buddhism really require me to be kind to cockroaches? Can I excuse myself on the grounds of compassion fatigue? Can I claim to have been taking the advice I gave out to carer after carer in my previous job, to put my own oxygen mask on before trying to help others?

What would you have done?

Answers on a waterproof postcard please.

I hear there’s been a lot of rain in the UK and NZ and I know storm Helene developed into something bigger once it passed here. I may publish something else on the storm, but for now know that I hope you are all keeping safe.

Be reassured that you’re all in my circles of loving kindness!