When you are focused on something you believe is wrong, harmful, foolish, or unnecessary, your attention naturally goes to what is happening right now.

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Why are they doing this again?
How have they not learned?
They had every opportunity to make a different choice.
How can people allow this to happen?

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But you are looking at an experience while it is still unfolding.

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The person making choices you don't understand may eventually have to live with consequences that teach them something your advice never could. The pattern they continue repeating may eventually become the very thing they decide they can no longer live with.

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And what happens through an experience isn't limited to the person having it.

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A child watching a parent make choices that create instability may grow up determined to create something different. Someone who experiences judgement may become more conscious of how they judge others. Witnessing someone being treated without dignity may strengthen another person's commitment to treating people differently.

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On a larger scale, suffering can call forward the instinct to protect, help, advocate, include, create, or change something that should not continue.

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You simply don't know everything this experience will call forward.

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When you find yourself consumed by what someone is doing, what they aren't learning, or what is happening in the world, widening the picture gives you something else to consider:

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If I could see everything this experience is teaching, changing, clarifying, awakening, or calling forward—in this person and in everyone it touches—would I feel even a little differently about what I'm seeing?

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You don't have to arrive at acceptance or suddenly feel compassion.

Sometimes becoming a little less angry, a little less certain that nothing good can come from this, or a little less convinced that you know what someone should be learning right now creates the room compassion needs.

Recognize When You Are Measuring Deservingness

Sometimes compassion becomes difficult because, without realizing it, you have begun deciding whether someone has earned it.

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They knew better.
They've had plenty of chances.
They created this problem.
They're not taking responsibility.
They're not even trying to change.

You may believe all of those things and still have compassion.

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The difficulty comes when they become conditions for it—when someone has to make a better choice, show remorse, take responsibility, learn the lesson, or make an effort before you feel able to soften toward their experience.

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When you notice yourself measuring whether compassion is deserved, try removing the condition.

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You don't have to decide they were right. You don't have to change what you think about their choices. Simply consider what becomes possible when compassion isn't something they have to earn from you.

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If they never do what you believe they should do next, could you still leave room for compassion for the human being living through the experience?

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Sometimes separating compassion from deservingness is enough to make a little more of it available.

Separate Compassion From What You Think It Requires

Sometimes resistance to compassion has less to do with the person and more to do with what you believe having compassion for them would require from you.

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If you soften toward someone, does that mean you have to forgive them? Let them back into your life? Help them? Stop being angry? Change your boundary? Overlook what happened? Agree with their perspective?

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When compassion becomes tied to one of those outcomes, withholding it can feel protective.

But compassion doesn't require you to give someone something you don't want to give.

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You can understand someone's pain without taking responsibility for it. You can care about what someone is going through without helping them out of it. You can recognize someone's humanity without giving them access to you. You can have compassion for the experiences that shaped someone while still holding them responsible for what they do with those experiences.

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When compassion feels difficult, consider what you believe would have to change if you allowed yourself to feel it.

What if nothing else had to change?

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Your boundary could remain. Your decision could remain. Your understanding of what happened could remain. The consequences could remain.

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Sometimes realizing that compassion doesn't require anything more from you makes it safer to let some of it in.

Notice What Withholding Compassion Brings Up in You

When compassion feels unavailable, notice what takes its place.

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You may find yourself replaying what someone did, becoming increasingly frustrated by choices you cannot control, feeling resentful that they haven't changed, or waiting for them to finally understand what you already see.

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Sometimes the response becomes stronger the longer you stay with it. Frustration becomes anger. Anger becomes resentment. Disagreement becomes contempt. Someone else's choices begin occupying far more of your attention and emotional energy than you want them to.

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Pay attention to what the absence of compassion is creating within you.

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How does it feel to experience this person without compassion?

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Not whether your anger is justified. Not whether they deserve your frustration. Simply what carrying those feelings is doing to your own experience.

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You may still believe exactly what you believed about their choices. You may still want something to change. But if withholding compassion is leaving you angry, consumed, hardened, or unable to let something go, consider whether continuing to withhold it is serving you.

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Compassion isn't only something another person receives. It changes what you have to carry in relation to them.