Spilled Coffee and Compassion

How you perceive a situation will determine your experience and your reaction. Let's imagine that you have a favorite coffeehouse that you frequent. The staff knows your name and always has a warm and friendly greeting as you walk through the door. An extremely grumpy woman whom you have never seen before serves you this particular morning. She appears preoccupied rather than caring about you or what she is doing. As she pours your hot coffee a good portion spills in your lap. Despite your jumping in shock, no apology follows. Your experience is anger: both toward the waitress and the owner, Joe, for hiring such an incompetent person. Then, a friend of yours at the next booth says, "Isn't it great that Joe hired her!"

"Great! Are you out of your mind? She just spilled hot coffee in my lap and walked away," you reply with your best indignant voice.

"Oh, you didn't hear the story?" your friend whispers.

"What story?" you angrily reply, still drying off your new slacks, wondering how you will go through the day looking as though you wet your pants.

"Yeah, Joe didn't know her from Adam. He read in the paper that her husband had died last month in a car accident. Apparently her husband's health insurance stopped, and she was looking for another job in order to pay for her sixteen-year-old son's chemotherapy for leukemia," your friend responds.

Now, you still have hot coffee in your crotch, but are you still angry? Unlikely. The only thing that shifted was your perception and attitude. Through discovering a reason to be compassionate, your entire experience changed—and there are always reasons to be compassionate.

An important part of healing (i.e., letting go of fear) is developing compassion. Instead of going out in the world and finding plenty of reasons to be upset, go out and discover reasons to extend love. There are thousands of reasons waiting for you right now. A helpful thought to remember is that a miracle is nothing more than allowing an old grievance to become a current compassion.

If you ever run short on reasons to be compassionate, remember there is always one good reason: It makes you feel better than anything else you could do.

Lee Jampolsky

Puppy Without Hip Joint

Bob Weber, past president of Kiwanis International, told this story. He had spoken to a club in a small town and was spending the night with a farmer on the outskirts of the community. He had just relaxed on the front porch when a newsboy delivered the evening paper. 

The boy noted the sign Puppies for Sale. The boy got off his bike and said to the farmer, "How much do you want for the pups, mister?"

"Twenty-five dollars, son."

The boy's face dropped. "Well, sir, could I at least see them anyway?"

The farmer whistled, and in a moment the mother dog came bounding around the corner of the house tagged by four of the cute puppies, wagging their tails and yipping happily. At last, another pup came straggling around the house, dragging one hind leg.

"What's the matter with that puppy, mister?" the boy asked.

"Well, Son, that puppy is crippled. We took her to the vet and the doctor took an X ray. The pup doesn't have a hip joint and that leg will never be right."

To the amazement of both men, the boy dropped the bike, reached for his collection bag and took out a fifty-cent piece. 

"Please, mister," the boy pleaded, "I want to buy that pup. I'll pay you fifty cents every week until the twenty-five dollars is paid. Honest I will, mister."

The farmer replied, "But, Son, you don't seem to understand. That pup will never, never be able to run or jump. That pup is going to be a cripple forever. Why in the world would you want such a useless pup as that?"

The boy paused for a moment, then reached down and pulled up his pant leg, exposing that all too familiar iron brace and leather knee-strap holding a poor twisted leg. 

The boy answered, "Mister, that pup is going to need someone who understands him to help him in life!"