“I am a brick wall! You will never break me!” the strapping man-sized teenager thundered.

Day after day he refused to participate in activities with the other students at the detention center. Not even “The Birdie Song” could win him over those first weeks.

His attitude was typical of many kids in detention. The barriers they’d erected for their own protection and survival seemed impenetrable.  

Some months later this same boy was tried as an adult and convicted of attempted murder. On the day he left to begin serving a sentence almost equal to his age, the staff struggled to hold back the tears as we hugged him goodbye.

Somewhere along the way, this young man had softened and abandoned his brick wall. Gone were all signs of hostility. He’d opened up to human connection, allowing those around him to see his tenderness. Like so many students, the changes he underwent seemed significant.

He reminded us once again that kids in detention are not what they did. 

I seemed to have no problem separating the students from the misdeeds. I loved those kids—even the ones who were harder to love. If they were with us long enough to get to know them, I knew I would learn to love them.  

Unfortunately, I often find it difficult to extend that same kind of mercy toward many adults. It’s especially challenging when the adults appear to have lived with so much more privilege than kids in detention. 

I want adults to be kind and generous to all. I want them to be tolerant and forgiving. I want them to be positive role models. 

Expectations

I know it’s really unfair because those are my personal desires and expectations. I have no business trying to inflict my values on anyone else. But when people don’t act the way I want them to, I’m left to deal with my judgy-ness and disappointment.

My thinking is all wrong—I admit it. I need to accept all people exactly where they are. I managed it pretty well with students in detention, and now I need to work on showing that same kind of compassion to everyone I encounter. 

In Awakening Joy, James Baraz and Shosahana Alexander offer some good advice. They say that when you think of someone less lovable, you should identify one of their positive qualities. Then you should hold your focus on that positive trait and send them blessings. For example, they say you can repeat, “May you find happiness in your life. May you be at peace.” Do it with your whole heart over and over, and you will feel yourself begin to soften.

And if you can’t come up with a good trait, they suggest imagining that person as a young child who has had a difficult life.  

Hiding our pain

Now that’s an approach I can relate to. I’ve seen up close how terribly hard life has been for a lot of kids. And I’ve seen the lengths they’ve gone to to hide their pain.

Although I’d never considered it before, I suppose the adults I’ve been critical of may well be hiding years of their own suffering. Things like aloofness, arrogance, and condescension may be their attempts to mask their own pain. Maybe they really aren’t so different than the kids I’ve known.

They, like the rest of us, have just been trying their best to survive.

Looking within, I can certainly identify my own strategies of defense. I avoid people and situations that I perceive may threaten my peace. Sometimes I close myself off from others to resist making myself vulnerable.

‘Disarm all hostility’

Baraz and Alexander quote the poet Longfellow who said, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

I’m finally learning what I have to do to love when it doesn’t come easily. Because there’s no way to read the secret history of others, I need to accept that everyone has suffered. I need to let go of “me,” that hypersensitive part of myself that overreacts to what people say and do. If I can do that,  there will be more room for understanding and compassion.

And I hope that by releasing “me,” I can better contribute to  the “we”—we as in the collective oneness where love and acceptance abide.