By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Don’t let the whole Boy Monk persona thing fool you. I have a good old-fashioned nasty Irish temper including, on occasion, a very sharp tongue. Several times recently, I almost pulled out the cork and let it all fly.
One such moment involved a doctor treating a sick loved one. The doctor’s demeanor was not exactly what I would call a textbook example of a good bedside manner.
The second incident involved a restaurant worker in a fully-staffed facility. She decided screen time on her personal cell phone was more critical than checking whether my food order (intended for my sick family member waiting in the car) was ready.
The final time was at work. A co-worker made a decision I strongly disagreed with, and which had a significant negative impact on much of the rest of the workplace.
Of course, one could make plausible arguments of mitigating circumstances for each of these cases.
Health care workers are overwhelmed right now. Perhaps the restaurant worker—who eventually apologized for totally ignoring me—was texting about a pressing personal problem I did not know about. And maybe my co-worker, stretched emotionally thin like the rest of us during the last few years, just needed a professional change of pace.
With a wee bit of the luck of the Irish, I actually considered the possibility of such mitigating circumstances, in real time, before I reacted to these situations. Thinking before speaking helped keep my Irish temper in check.
It also helped when I visualized the photo I used to illustrate this blog article. I grew up around Trappist monks who lived in the now-closed Huntsville monastery in Northern Utah. The photo shows one of those monks (Brother Felix) comforting another (Father Jerome) during the latter’s serious (and perhaps final) illness. I tell many similar stories about these kind and gentle monks in my new book Monastery Mornings.
During the recent times described above when my Irish temper was on the rise, the photo generated a wave of compassion that replaced my anger. Compassion for my loved one, for the stressed-out doctor and his other patients, for the restaurant worker and her personal problems, and for my burned out co-worker.
I am no expert on human psychology or sociology, but even I can see that one of the reasons the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is making us all so miserable is that it often generates more anger than compassion. This sort of an emotional infection results in many unpleasant community-wide symptoms.
For example, the vaccinated suggest that all medical treatment be withheld from the unvaccinated who get sick.
Anti-maskers mock or assault mask wearers and accuse them of sinister and insidious motives just because they promote the community health benefits of mask-wearing, or because they try to enforce the policy of a business or a county mandate.
Self-proclaimed champions of “liberty” and self-anointed guardians of “safety” point middle fingers and expend much more energy on shouting at each other than on the hard work of dialogue and understanding.
It’s all very long on righteousness/anger and quite short on empathy/compassion. And it’s quite tiresome. I get sick thinking about it, but also feel my Irish temper bubbling up. I need a glimpse of my monk photo to calm me down. I have to remind myself about compassion by visualizing it.
What is compassion?
A Holy Cross nun/friend gave me a gift when I graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1983 (see An Extraordinary Sister Act). It is a book (Compassion by Holy Cross priest Father Don McNeill) which explains well what I mean here—“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish.”
Yes, compassion starts with a doctor being more patient, or with workers and co-workers focusing a little more on serving others rather than on themselves. When these folks fail, however, even when we disagree with their behavior, compassion also can start with someone like me giving them a break, or the benefit of the doubt, rather than taking it personally.
We don’t do nearly enough compassion today.
Instead of sharing in brokenness, we point it out and criticize it. Instead of sharing in anguish, we blame each other for it. Instead of entering into another’s place of pain, we inflict the pain…twisting the knife and rubbing salt in the wound.
It has not always been this way.
When signing the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin said: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” If alive today, Franklin would be ashamed to discover that not only are we hanging separately, we gleefully toss ropes around each other’s necks.
We will succumb to even the weakest strain of any common infliction if we respond with anger at each other. We all must find a way to make compassion go viral instead.
Given my fierce Irish temper, I just hope and pray I am up to the task. I am willing to try. Are you?
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
