Velvet Verbosity

I was one of those kids that always rooted for the underdog. Maybe it was because I was small. Maybe it was because I was small and got picked on and abused for it. Maybe it was because I had a physical defect that other children weren’t exactly kind about. Maybe it was because I started out with an untainted niceness that I was punished for. Maybe it was because my sensitive little self was put into the care of too many people who were abusive.

Maybe I was just one of those kids that always rooted for the underdog.

It was nice of me, and all. Too nice. In rooting for the underdog, I allowed myself to put my feelings, my wants, my needs behind someone else’s. The underdog was much worse off than I, so I felt guilt if I didn’t give all my patience, all my effort, all my resources, all of my bleeding heart, to the underdog. Who was I to feel or need or want when this poor sorry underdog was in the world? As sweet as that may sound, it was some sort of effed up warped thinking on my part that led me down more than one road of self-sacrifice and didn’t yield much in the way of payback. And that’s where it gets interesting.

As nice as I was to take care of all those underdogs, I expected a payback for my “niceness”. I wouldn’t have told you so. Hell, I didn’t even let myself in on this expectation of mine. Yet there it was, everytime, smacking me in the face and my underdog of the hour in the ass. Had I been conscious of it, I would have heard my inner voice saying something to this effect:

Ok. I’ve been nice. I’ve been patient. I’ve shared all my strength and resources and wisdom to help this underdog out of the self-dug pit he/she is in. So now I deserve this underdog’s unconditional love, respect, and admiration for the rest of eternity in this and every known and unknown parallel universe. Never should this underdog allow him or herself to find flaw with me, and in so doing he/she shall never abandon me.

That’s right. I expected a badge of sainthood for my efforts. I never got one. Even when I did, I still got abandoned, and sometimes because I was “too good” for them. My response to such behavior from my underdogs was to beat the snot out of them (verbally and emotionally of course) because they were breaking the underdog-overdog covenant and HOW DARE THEY? Like Bill Cosby said, “I brought you in this world…and I’ll take you out.” Only it wasn’t so funny when I said it. The Cos was wise, while I was just cruel in my insecurity.

Now I recognize that dangerous stirring of compassion for what it is. At least my warped version of it. When I’m feeling anxious, worried, angry, stressed, tired, hungry, useless, ashamed, or afraid, and then I cross paths with an underdog and I get that achy feeling of compassion in my heart, I RUN. Because I know that the ache of compassion, the rise of the need to help, is not niceness, it’s just profound selfishness cloaked in what looks a lot like niceness.

In Buddhism, at least the community that I belong to, there are often references between compassion and “idiot compassion”. It goes like this. If someone is beating you over the head with a baseball bat, idiot compassion makes you stand there and take the beating because you think the attacker wouldn’t be beating you if it weren’t for their own pain. True compassion, stemming from wisdom, makes you grab the bat before even the first blow falls upon your fragile skull and say, “No way buster!” because even though it’s true they wouldn’t be beating you if they weren’t in pain, letting them hit you won’t make either of you feel any better.

‘Nuff said.