The Big Why

Posted on June 30, 2004 in Compassion Reading

I am glad that the New Agers didn’t invade the conversation about The Art of Happiness last night. Nor did the paranoid left who, when they get to talking about mind control, share an awful lot in common with the paranoid right. And that’s the point I am making here: the Right isn’t a Christian movement. It’s a New Age Movement.

The reason why I was glad was because a troubled woman came to the group. Her mother had just died and one of her inheritances was the guardianship of her schizophrenic sister. She told us she wondered what her sister had done to deserve this, what she had done.

Now, a New Ager would have told her that she was being punished for something, that it had to do with her karma. Just the thing to tell a fellow sufferer of Life. Leave her to ask herself what terrible thing she had done, if not in this life, then in a past life. It’s the same voice that neocons use when they call the working poor “lazy” or “stupid”. “Bad things only happen to bad people.”

Which happens to be bullshit.

The better answer was the one I and several others gave. There’s no sense in asking why because you cannot possibly fathom The Big Reason. There’s no reason to place a problem over this problem you have. Yes, your sister is hell to care for. She hears voices and sees things that aren’t there. She gets strange ideas into her head. This is because she has a disease and that is the only why we humans can practically answer. The sisters remain human beings like ourselves upon whom the rain may or may not fall for no reason whatsoever.

I cited the Book of Job. “You’re looking into the whirlwind,” I said. She laughed and said “I sure am!” “Take care of yourself,” I said. “Then you can be there for your sister.”

No blame attached, just a recognition of the responsibility for her sister that she cannot escape. Why is it there? Well, it is there and we do our best to live through these things.

When we see each other as just as subject to suffering as anyone else, then we can feel a little more free. Compassion follows.

The trouble with New Age philosophy, like neoconservatism and the rogue Christianity of conservative Protestantism and NeoJansenist Catholicism, is that it places the blame for all tragedy on the victim. That is why I reject it.