A Compromised Compassion

By Abner Bendix

Imagine a little boy seeing the world as special - an internal picture of perfection revolving around the image of his own self - a pulsating star, at center stage. Then, he sees that he does not match what his self-image symbolizes, the alpha-male personality of both his father and grandfather. They are aggressively domineering, hugely successful at making money, and seem to have sexually satisfied both his mother and grandmother. But the boy realizes that he is his mother, with an identical facial appearance, gait and sensitivity. And this divergence from a male ideal of invulnerability is felt by him as shame.

Beginning with that real-life story, A Compromised Compassion describes the deeply hidden shame revealed. A brief narrative of that life is followed by a collection of original quotes, poems and short essays. This is a tale of social fear and anxiety, and the internal walls of self-protection that became self-isolation. Habitual patterns of thought and behavior, along with rigid images of self and others were the bricks of the wall. Judgments were made and expectations established, involving failure versus success, and shame versus fame. Feelings of empathy, remorse and compassion were cut off.

The internal obstacles were self-constructed. Those obstacles are common to most of us, and involve the emotional memories we become so attached to, the distorted ideal visions of our own self and others, and our dependence upon external forces to secure our trust.

One way out involves a movement of trust within, leading to individual integrity, while at the same time remaining empathetic and compassionate. Once this is accomplished, then the walls come tumbling down, allowing our mind the freedom to wander where it will, and allowing our compassion the freedom to touch all of humanity. These words might help you find that freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780692989739

Book preview

Copyright © 2017

All rights reserved. Published by The Abner Bendix Project, Inc.

For information, please contact the Abner Bendix Team:

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-0-692-98973-9

Printed in the United States of America

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

-Khalil Gibran, from THE PROPHET (1923)

Our self-image is a mask, a figment of our socialized imagination, filled with fantasies of goodness and nightmares of badness. They are delusions, and civilization makes us believe that the mask is fixed and necessary – a big lie.

-Abner Bendix (2017)

Table of Contents

Part One - A Journey of Understanding

Section 1 - The Story of My Self-Image

Section 2 - The Paradigm

Section 3 - The Magic

Interlude - A Time of Change

Five original Abner Bendix poems

Part Two - Kernels of Truth

A collection of original Abner Bendix quotes and short essays

Section 1 - Relationship

Section 2 - Empathy, Remorse, and Compassion

Section 3 - Mind/Personality

Section 4 - Civilization and the Individual

Section 5 - Magical Feelings

Afterword

Bibliography

About the Abner Bendix Project

PART ONE

A Journey of Understanding

SECTION 1

The Story of My Self-Image

An Early Dilemma

Imagine a little boy seeing the world as special – an internal picture of perfection revolving around the image of his own self – a pulsating star, at center stage. Then, he sees that he does not match what his self-image symbolizes, the alpha-male personality of both his father and grandfather. They are aggressively domineering, hugely successful at making money, and seem to have sexually satisfied both his mother and grandmother. But the boy realizes that he is his mother, with an identical facial appearance, gait and sensitivity. And this divergence from a male ideal of invulnerability is felt by him as shame.

After what feels like a total collapse of his self-image, and his place in the social order, the boy withdraws into a world of books, television and movies. His childhood and adolescence become a world of self-isolation, a social malady that will linger throughout his life. Yet now, this boy’s mind, although stuck in adolescence within an aging body, has been sharing the knowledge gained through his experience. He has also been putting that knowledge to work by helping to serve underprivileged people in the Bronx.

The boy in this story is me, Da Bronx was my mom’s home town, and this charitable work is being made possible by my current employer. He is a landlord who owns buildings throughout the Bronx, but he is a businessman who attends meetings wearing a Batman tee-shirt, and who sits in his office with legs outstretched underneath his desk, in bare feet. Together, we have been providing free activities for his tenants, taking them on excursions outside the city. In large groups of families, via chartered coach busses, we have taken people to working farms, enabling inner-city residents to experience many wonders of nature for the first time. During the summer, we have rented out camps with swimming pools, rock-climbing walls, laser-tag, pedal-boating and other leisure activities which can be too expensive for people who are disadvantaged, economically.

On my own, I've been performing spoken word in cafes around Astoria, a community with wide cultural diversity. There, I’m speaking with people who have more material wealth. The ideas I am sharing at these performances relate to how we become socialized – drawing upon experiences and observations from my life. At one performance, a mother came up afterwards and told me she wished to attend another event, along with her 17-year-old son, who is having social problems. She feels that my performance might help him, by describing the source of his social fear, and his social awkwardness. Her reaction makes me a happy person, knowing someone might benefit from my description of the social world, but I’m bewildered. How am I being looked at as a teacher when I have no credentials? And how am I able to provide free activities for the underprivileged when I have no material possessions?

Well, the nice thing about that question dear reader is the answer – compassion – a compassion at first caged and compromised, but then set free. The freedom allowed me to connect with others without feeling shame. There was nothing to hide, enabling others to trust my motives. So a wealthy man entrusted me with the funds necessary to provide fun and educational activities for his tenants; and a mother entrusted my words with speaking to her child. The key to unlocking the door to my compassion was something I experienced later in life, around the age of 50, when I began working summers for an environmental group as a door-to-door canvasser. I felt like a door-to-door-salesman, but my job involved asking for donations to various environmental causes.

At this Non-Profit Organization my fellow workers were young, idealistic,