Carrying the weight of the world lightly
Look, yes, it’s true, we do need to face the terrible truths of the world. We need to face the destruction that’s occurring. We need to face the danger that we are all in. Yes, and we need to face the opportunity that we have to help, and the enormous price the world might pay if we choose not to help, or if we choose to help but do not succeed.
Yes, it’s true.
But.
Holding the whole weight of the world is a superhuman task; a feat that requires a lifetime’s training and perseverance. It is not necessary to hold the weight of the world in order to help the world. It is a great and noble task to hold the weight of the world, but it is neither wise nor necessary to undertake this without decades of training. I do not have this level of training. For this reason I choose to bear the weight of the world in small chunks, while simultaneously increasing my weight-bearing ability through training.
Here’s how it works: holding the weight of, say, a single person (oneself) means accepting one’s own pain. Pain can be grief, fear, anger, hatred, all varieties of physical and emotional pain. With training, it is possible to accept pain without resistance. This is helpful because when making decisions that affect me, I can bring my full wisdom to bear rather than flinching away from pain and making decisions in a reactive way.
Holding the weight of more than one person is possible through empathy. I empathize with you; through this I feel your pain; if I can accept this pain without resistance then we might say that I am able to hold the weight of our relationship. This means that I can bring forth all my wisdom when making decisions that affect the two of us, rather than instinctively flinching away from either of our pain.
Holding the weight of the world means empathizing with the vast number of current and future citizens of this planet, in order to make wise decisions that affect all these beings. This is indeed a desirable thing to accomplish. But empathizing with this vast collective brings up an extraordinary amount of pain, and an extraordinary level of equanimity is required to accept it. I personally do not have the level of training required to accept such extraordinary pain.
Why is it good to bear any weight at all? Because the only way to not bear weight is to not look at the pain; to flinch away instinctively when it comes to our attention. This means that we are in denial about some of the facts that, if we were not in denial of, would bring up the pain. So yes it really is desirable to bear weight.
But there is no moral imperative that requires us to bear infinite weight at all times. We are humans. One of the things we may do with our lives is gradually develop the capacity for equanimity while gradually dialing up the level of weight that we bear in the world. This is good and noble. Or we may choose to spend our time on other good and noble deeds. Either way, there is no wisdom in trying to face the whole world’s pain all in one go, and there is certainly no shame in not being born with an inbuilt capacity for infinite equanimity. To my knowledge, no beings have yet been born with this property!
