A chapter from your Life book could be a nice way of taking stock of your
coping styles when life throws a curve ball on you! I heard one such
interesting chapter from someone’s life and it stuck with me, a story that
speaks of the inception of a ”Compassion Community” in
the least of accepted places. Life is beautiful that way! A teacher walking
with you all the time!

A man’s wife died during Covid. Let’s call him Mr. M.

Mr. M was, this poor dead woman’s third husband. Mr. M. and his wife had 3
kids, all very young. Poor family had to go through a lot during Covid.
Gradually, Mr. M found a community that helped him and his family cope with these
tough times. This group of people were none other than the previous two
husbands of Mr. M’s dead wife and these two men also had their kids who shared
the same mother. Every kid in this community lost their mother, but now had one
father and two uncles!!! These men’s paths crossed briefly when Mrs. M was
around, but they didn’t know that they would become each other support buddies
for life as life takes its twists and turns. The kids get along well, men pick
up each other’s kids if one is running late from work. They meet during
weekends and celebrate holidays together. They celebrate their lives and kid’s achievements
together. One of their kids graduated college recently. It was a very proud
moment for all the fathers! All three men were rooting for each other. They
threw a block party to celebrate this kid’s success. Now, how cool is that!

The Word ‘family’ Latin root word is ‘Familia’ which means a household that
includes both relatives and servants. This context made me think ‘When exactly people
in the family are treated like servants or relatives? Does living together grant
one permission to treat others in their family one way or the other? For me, a
family is a safe place constructed by a community of people who know that they
belong to someone or someplace. And this space is filled with compassion. And I
would say that these men and their kids are very lucky to find such a compassionate
community.

Sometimes people call some bunch of people their family only because they live together or if they are related. Such beings are together because of the conditioning of mind and space! Mostly they recruit family members to serve their selfish motives! Such families could be a fragile space and destroy one’s trust in the goodness of life. But I believe that no human being is bad by birth, it’s just unfortunate incidents that construct one’s being in one way or the other. I still think that it’s never too late to realize this and start healing so that we can become our autentic self and perhaps compassionate communities for others.