It can be so cliché this time of year to talk about the word gratitude.  Everyone sends an email about it or makes a social post.  Nothing wrong with it, it’s mostly if not entirely genuine.  It’s such a valuable word to understand.  Gratitude.  Human beings are not capable of having two different emotional experiences at the same time and being in a state of gratitude is simply one of the most powerful states that has all kinds of mental, physical, relational and spiritual benefits.  Right up there with Joy and Hope.

But, gratitude is an experience most people are seeking for themselves, not an experience we are necessarily seeking to give.  Gratitude is often something people remind themselves of when things get hard. That’s why “experts” teach writing down the 10 things we are grateful for each morning or each evening, so we are reminded of the beauty in our life.  So we can feel the way we want to feel.  That’s not to minimize the truth or significance of that desire or need, or of the gratitude we genuinely feel for others. 

Consider the word Compassion this year as you have experiences with family, clients, colleagues, self…humans.  Compassion is still something we experience, but it is a result of something we choose to be and give.  It’s a softening of our body, our mind, our expectations.  It’s an opening of our hearts.  Compassion is a view of life and every person (or animal) in it through a lens of love and appreciation, no matter what or who they are.   

Compassion is sitting across the Thanksgiving table from your batshit crazy family member and remembering, they are just on their journey and letting go of all assumptions.  Compassion is listening to the pain in the ass agent who seems to be nothing but incompetent, on the other end of the transaction and remembering, we all have a story.  And you have no idea what theirs is. 

Compassion changes our world.  The choice to be compassion (no, not compassionate, that’s an act.  Rather to Be Compassion) is transcendent.  It modifies our perspective on everything.  Move from frustration to compassion and you can feel it right now, in this moment.  Your experience of the world changes. 

I believe most contemporary definitions of compassion are wrong.  They mostly reference pity and concern for the weak and suffering.  What if compassion instead is just, remembering?  Remembering that we are all on a journey.  We are all the same.  We all get lost.  We all find our way.  We all have a gift.  We all lose sight of our gifts.  And we are all in different places on the path. 

Maybe, being compassion is one of the ways in which you can give the greatest thanks this season. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts about gratitude and compassion.  What they mean to you.  How they impact your world.  And whether or not you want to make them a way of being and how that might change your story, your journey, your tribe. 

With so much love.  -Matt