A note of context: I played ultimate competitively for a long time, and this newsletter began as an effort to examine life through the lens of the sport.
Hi! I’m Jonathan, and this is my newsletter: an effort to build emotional intelligence. If you like what I’m doing, please consider sharing with a friend or subscribing:
I’ve been doing all this work around anger. Running workshops, writing about it. Trying to understand its presence, and the ways in which it surfaces, and how I can act responsibly when it does.
But anger isn’t what I want to invite into my life, and I think it’s worth saying, and saying it like that, because what we pay attention to grows. If I’m going to have anger on my mind, I’d like it to be there for a reason.
What I want, so badly, is compassion. To live a life surrounded by it, where it’s what comes to mind first and it’s the goal and the guiding light. The thing we all see as the point. That which I’m often, maybe even constantly, extending to myself and others.
It’s hard, though.
Judgment can be so second nature. If I were in that person’s shoes, I’d act differently. I wouldn’t be that mean, that stupid, that clueless. I wouldn't mess up that badly. I’d have it figured out.
I’ve long thought of compassion as “how I treat others,” but it’s really a question of how I treat myself.
Two things that I’ve noticed lately: First, massive changes, like marriage preparation and wedding planning and home buying and moving and trying to forge a new career path, take their toll. Second, my first instinct is often to downplay all of it.
I can work so hard to disprove the notion that I deserve a break. I doubt myself; I see and point out all the flaws, all the shortcomings, all the reasons that failure is imminent; I start running a mental script that says “yeah! You are failing!”
Why can it be so hard to acknowledge my own good nature? Why, in moments when I’m giving my all, is there an instinct to punish? Why can it feel like my ability to love myself has atrophied?
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Compassion can be so elusive– the easiest thing to forget and the hardest thing to find. Sometimes I don’t see it until I’m thoroughly exhausted by efforts to walk other paths.
…which brings me back to the word “invite.”
Words have real limits. They aren’t the power they hold, or the places they point to. Still, I like to swim out as far as they’ll allow. Climb as high as they take me.
Writing about compassion is less an attempt at neat definition and more an effort to orient myself toward this question: where might compassion fit here?
My hope is that the more I ask, in as many moments as possible, the more its energy walks through the door and makes itself at home. Maybe it’ll even start showing up voluntarily, without solicitation.
“Invite” is about giving compassion the floor, stepping back, and waiting.
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Being a human is not easy. Just being here is difficult.
That’s a universal truth, and compassion is remembering it and acting accordingly. Seeing and holding it, tenderly. Kindly. With softness.
We all deserve acknowledgement for what suffering does to us. Of how hard it is to have life leave you empty handed, hurting or second-guessing, feeling guilt or shame or dread or heartbreak.
Compassion precedes understanding, though. Its essence is being given without justification.
We’re all made up of infinite variables, and controlling them is mostly an illusion. Compassion is what’s left when we remember that we aren’t our strengths or our weaknesses and we let labels of good and bad melt away.
“Appreciation” has been a useful word for me in this regard (thank you, Ram Dass). Life is an ongoing struggle, a place where me and a bunch of other humans are still figuring out the best way to live lovingly. I may dislike the barriers, the challenges, the conditioning and socialization… but “human” is my current status, flaws and neuroses and all. There’s something to appreciate in how non-negotiable that is.
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There are places in my psyche that just boil down to me being too hard on myself—being critical while trying to learn a new skill, for example. There are others that are more jagged and deep—demons that have haunted me for a long time.
Regardless of which end of the spectrum I’m on in a given situation, my thoughts can start in a mental room with rigid, unforgiving walls. From that place, it’s so easy to take a sharp, scathing, accusatory outlook on myself.
When compassion gets a seat at the table, it pulls back the curtain, and slices of warmth and light start making their way in. I remember that there are more roads than just the ones to darkness.
Compassion makes me weightless in a deep, infinite sea. It generates an outpouring of love.
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It’s fairly clear to me that I can’t make a positive impact on the world without self compassion. You know the whole thing about the mom and the baby on the airplane and the mom putting her mask on first: if I can’t care for myself how can I see that for others?
That said, I look around the world and I see all this conflict—all these instances, big and small, of people messing up, falling short, failing. I see us facing big questions about justice and accountability and morality (just in the frisbee world, part of what got me thinking about all of this was the discourse around the PUL/Monarchs a month or so ago).
What is right for everyone involved? I certainly can’t say that I know. The truth can sometimes appear very clear, very cut and dry, but when you get closer that’s usually a mirage. Involve more than one person, one identity, one culture, one interest, and the only sure thing about certainty is that it falls apart.
Among the only sure bets that I see with any situation is asking: where is there room for compassion here?
Filter every moment, over and over, through the lens of compassion. How can I show it, to myself and everyone else involved? What would it look like to steer myself toward a brighter place, to introduce softness, to question darkness?
Do this again, and then again.
What happens?
Where do compassion and competition intersect?
Where can we find compassion in sports? Is it somewhere inside of frustration, disagreement, and defeat? In winning and success, in the passing of time–from young and quick and maybe brash to seasoned and with new priorities and possibly some wishes about having done things differently? Within the context of sports, is there room for showing compassion to ourselves and others, teammates, opponents, friends, strangers?
Would sports be better if we asked these questions more often? Would athletes’ lives?
To state the obvious, I’m very much drawn to wondering. I also think I’m not alone in that.
With that, I’m hosting a series of conversations called Men, Let’s Talk about Anger in Ultimate. It’s about taking a closer look at an emotion that so commonly runs through us both on and off the field, but it’s also about emotional intelligence and self awareness and understanding—all of which ultimately strengthen the compassion muscles.
Check out the info below at the link below, and if it’s right for you, please consider joining or spreading the word. That, and if you have any thoughts or questions, let me know.
If you’re a frisbee player at Fools Fest this weekend and want to say hi, I’d love that! I’m playing with a mixed team called Voulez-Hoos.
Last thing: Make You Feel that Way by Blackalicious is a great song that I’ve loved for many years, and that I’ve had back in rotation lately.
Be nice this week. You deserve it.
All love,
Jonathan