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Cate Steane: Everyone Needs Compassion

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While grieving the loss of her best friend, Cate Steane shares why having compassion for others is so important.

Years ago, my best friend died. It was sudden, she was young and I was devastated. I struggled with my grief from her passing over the next year. In every conversation, I told the person I was talking to about my loss so they would understand the periscope through which I was seeing the world.

I went through my days passing people on the street, sitting next to people on the train and attending meetings at work. I kept thinking, “These people have no idea that I’m grieving.” And then one day, that coin flipped over and I saw the other side: “…and I have no idea what they’re going through.”

In a Buddhist parable, a woman’s young son dies. Distraught, she asked the Buddha if he could help her. He said he could if she could just bring him a mustard seed from the nearby village. “This would be easy,” she thought. “But,” the Buddha told her, “you must get the seed from a house that has not known death.”

At the first house where she asked for the mustard seed, it was readily offered. When she asked, “Has there been death in this house?” the villager told her the story of a lost uncle. At the next house, a sister had died. The same happened at the next house, and the next. As she heard story after story, she came to understand that everyone around her was also carrying a loss.

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If you were to meet my niece, you would see a witty mid-career professional, perhaps someone whose path in life had been smoothed by her good looks. But in fact, every breath she takes is made painful by lungs scarred with multiple blood clots. You would never know it to look at her.

Now as I move through the world, I remember that anyone I interact with may be carrying some pain that I cannot see. I let the grief and pain in my own life be my guide to how I understand others. With a Perspective, I’m Cate Steane.

Cate Steane is a climate activist who lives and writes in Santa Rosa.

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