Thought for the day

I was reading this article in The Globe yesterday:

After she got involved with the Congolese women, she realized that even her five-year relationship with her partner wasn’t right – just another form of self-anesthetization. He didn’t support her passion to volunteer. They fought. “I’m a human being, not a lifestyle,” she spat at him at one point.

“It’s haunting,” she says now of their relationship. “It’s shocking that we didn’t share a value system, that I thought we had and how easy it is to get swept up in the day to day and bond without really being able to step back and look at the bigger picture. There can be an illusion of connection,” she says, shaking her head again.

It was that very thing – the power of human connection – that turned out to be her greatest lesson in Congo, even though she had started out with just a desire to make a difference and find meaning.

One of her first discoveries was the difference between pity and compassion. “Pity separates us from other people. It’s a top-down approach as opposed to being open-hearted and feeling with someone. But I wouldn’t fault anyone for approaching these issues with a sense of pity. It’s where we all start.

“You go in with lots of grandiose dreams about what it means to make a difference, and in the end what you learn is a sense of trust in the process. You have to just show up, give it your best effort.”

— What Congo taught Lisa Shannon, The Globe and Mail