Choosing Compassion, Empathy, Kindness

With sadness I took back to the library today the two books I have been blogging about out so much, George W. Bush's Decision Points, and Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight. The latter is the book that has had such a profound influence on me. When Dr. Taylor had a stroke that caused her to lose the functioning of her "doing" left side of her brain, it opened up a new world to her, the here and now "being" right brain.

I realized that to be completely right-brain dominant is completely foreign to me. She felt attached to "an eternal flow," "frolicked in glee in a boundless sea," "an unforgettable sense of peace," "connected to the life force of the universe," "divine bliss." I have certainly never felt anything like that. She came out of that experience believing that we were all created to know great joy. I love it when I experience joy. In the last year I have been battling depression. To realize that I can make the choice to let my right brain be more dominant at certain times, is very exciting to me; that I can let go of sadness, anger, and other negative emotions, and replace them with positive emotions. I can get the amount of sleep that my body and brain cells need to do their job of keeping me healthy. I can surround myself with people who need me and love me and believe in me.

One of the keys to Dr. Taylor's recovery of her left brain functioning was to have people around her who celebrate her triumphs, not focus on her disabilities. People who accepted her as she was now, and encouraged her to work toward her dreams of who she could become. She learned to become very careful of her "self-talk," to avoid self-pity (that was something George W. Bush also mentioned in his book), to avoid self deprecation, pay attention to the physiological components of feelings and stimuli. She wanted people to come close, to touch appropriately.

I hope I don't forget the ideas she shared in her book. Probably the most important one was that we have the power to choose how we respond to stimuli. We can respond with compassion and empathy, even if the person we are dealing with is not coming from a place of kindness.