We have all suffered. Sometimes at our own hands. Often at the hands of others. We have all received love from somewhere. Sometimes at our own hands. Often at the hands of others.

No matter how far I look, there is an endless supply of people who had it worse than me. No matter how far I look, there is an endless supply of people who had it better than me. I stand in the middle, on some nameless spectrum that cannot be measured…for we would be measuring the cosmic web that intertwines soul and neurons and heart and environment and free will…and such a web can never be accurately be measured by limited beings such as us.

The measuring stick tossed aside, I am left with the much more immediate feelings of gratitude and grief: I have received much that is loving and healing; I have suffered much that is fearful and harmful. The record lives in my cells, as concentric rings of a tree. The feelings swell throughout my body, as thoroughly as rain covers the skin in wetness. Cursed to feel it whether or not I asked for it. Blessed to feel it whether or not I earned it.

Why? Why? Why? The great question asked over the ages…a question almost as futile as the measuring stick I have tossed aside. Yet there is one who can answer the why. But this unified part of me does not answer in linear ways. It does not answer in ways that are satisfying to the culture I find myself in. The ‘whys’ are personal beyond explanation….and they are living answers, like a tree that is never the same as yesterday and promising to be different tomorrow: always the same tree and never the same. But we don’t need the ‘whys’ to move forward.

Compassion for self and others is the true companion for both grief and gratitude. Compassion calls us to be willing to see the grief in ourselves and others, with honesty and without self-deception. Compassion makes it safe to look, for when we aren’t judging ourselves or others, it makes much more natural sense to simply care about finding ways to reduce that which brings grief in us and others. Compassion gives us permission to believe we deserve to be grateful for what we have and to receive what we have. And it gives us permission to believe that others are also equally deserving. The old game of deciding who deserves the most becomes nonsensical…as nonsensical as a parent views the choice of which of their children most deserves to eat.

Judgment is an old tool that is outdated and blunt. It is time for us to evolve out of it. As most tools, it served its purpose for a time…as a thumb comforts the infant who must one day learn new ways to meet emotional needs…the very same thumb that will cause the teeth to deform if that emotional growth is refused. As a species, our own judgment…the tool we’ve used to figure out who is good and who is bad…is turning against us to poison us. It is creating the very danger we wield the tool to protect against. Only a few can even yet see how old-fashioned, how outdated, how defunct this tool has become.

True compassion is the butterfly that must burst forth from the fossilized and restrictive cocoon of judgment. It is time we summon the maturity and the wisdom to know the difference between fake compassion (masquerading as toxic positivity and the denial of privilege), and real compassion: the kind that will stand up for all that is good until the ends of the earth…not because there is bad that must be warred against, but because there is so much need of compassion for all involved upon planet earth that we never rest until all that is deserved is achieved.

Judgment requires enemies…requires villains and heroes. Compassion requires neither. In fact, compassion requires that we ultimately let go of both. For as long as we think we need villains to make heroes, then our villains shall always be sought, chosen, paid, and advertised.

Compassion is not weak, for it is unwilling to close its eyes to even one being that has not yet been brought into the fold of well-being. Yet, the great paradox that the eyes of judgment cannot see…as obvious as the nose you forget is between your eyes…is that no villains are required to grow and act on compassion. No punishment must be dealt for love to be given. Boundaries to protect can be built and stood up for, without ever once pulling out the measuring stick of judgment. For many, the very concept of separating healthy boundaries from judgment seems nonsensical. Yet, such a bias is one of the greatest deceptions to ever fall upon our human race.

For wisdom calls us to measure how effective a tool, a boundary, or a policy is at spreading the energy of thriving and love and compassion. It does not call us to look upon the wrongs of the world and tally a price of judgment and execute it no matter if the lesson is ever learned or if the person is ever reformed or if it ever teaches anything. Wisdom calls us to learn from the actual natural consequences of choices, instead of letting our centuries-old religious training push us into looking for the villains first, passing judgment, calling it justice…and forgetting along the way to even ask if true compassionate evolution has been served in learning from the choices made.

You are the first and last citizen of this world to practice true compassion on. It is a subject as simple as the concept of the ocean, and as deep and vast as the reality of the ocean. You can explain it to a child, yet you shall be swimming in understanding the entirety of it your whole life and beyond.

You deserve genuine compassion forever, no matter what. And so do all around you on this planet. And compassion calls us to have healthy boundaries and policies and to practice getting good at executing these well as truly evolved beings.

But here, the why makes all the difference. This evolution happens, not because the bad deserve punishment, but because we truly realize that the deserving of good for all is so powerful and fundamental that we never stop seeking to put it into action for all…so powerful that we are even willing to put down the sword of judgment we have clung to for comfort since our infancy.