Here are some thoughts about my book that you might find useful as you read through it. It is relatively short, with close to fifty-five pages that contain significant text. The main message of the book is very similar to that found in the book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse: true friends make us feel like a valued human being, and are a precious gift.
The book provides a detailed discussion about the background and development of concepts related to compassion and self-compassion. It explores these emotions’ relationships to other emotions, and provides all kinds of windows into understanding these relationships
The book has a chapter entitled “An Example of Having and Sharing Love.” It contains the story of Lee, who was a homeless man I met up with three years ago and who slept in the woods in a tent in the middle of winter when the temperature was 20F. The chapter describes in detail his plight under those difficult conditions. I befriended him, took him into my home and worked with him towards reestablishing himself into society. The moral of the story, explained at the end, is to be compassionate towards the homeless and help them, because you may end up in their shoes at some point.
The basic tenet of the book is that if two people are suffering from the same difficulty and start talking about it, an interesting chain of events can occur. When one person starts talking about their problem, they are being self-compassionate. The other person can strongly feel their suffering, because they have the same problem. Afterwards, the listening person usually offers words of encouragement: they have compassion. Then the initial listener has self-compassion and describes their own suffering back to the initial talker. This first talker then usually reciprocates and offers encouraging words. And on it goes. At some point they often start discussing ways to help alleviate their own suffering and each other’s at the same time. They are then both feeling compassion and self-compassion at the same time, which can form a strong bond/friendship. This is a powerful interaction, and great energy can come from it to work together and try to solve their problem.
[Excerpt taken from my extended blog from December, 2022 which is no longer in this blog sequence.]
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