This week, I noticed something uncomfortable about myself. When I heard about someone dying—someone whose values aligned with mine, someone doing work I believe in, someone who was helping others—my heart broke open. I carried that death with me for days, feeling it settle heavy in my chest. Then I heard about another death. Someone whose views I fundamentally disagreed with. Someone whose politics, in my opinion, have caused real harm to people I care about. And I’m ashamed to say… that death didn’t hit me the same way at all. That’s what I keep coming back to. That’s the uncomfortable truth I’m wrestling with.
Why does one death break my heart open and another… doesn’t? I know the answer, and I hate it. The first person felt like “one of mine.” Someone whose values aligned with mine, who stood for things I believe in. The second person? Their views opposed almost everything I hold dear. So my heart made a decision about whose death mattered more. And that’s the problem. Because while I’ve been sorting through my own grief hierarchy, people are suffering. Families are being torn apart. Communities are fracturing. People are living in fear. And I have to ask myself: Whose suffering am I willing to feel? Whose pain counts as “real” to me?
Our culture teaches us to think this way. We’re raised on independence—handle it yourself; don’t burden others; your pain is your problem. Pull yourself up. Be resilient. Be strong enough to do it alone. But that myth of independence doesn’t just exhaust us. It builds hierarchies in our hearts. It whispers that some people are more deserving of our compassion than others. That if someone needs help, maybe they didn’t try hard enough. That if their views differ from ours, maybe their suffering doesn’t count the same way. We create categories: ours and theirs. Deserving and undeserving. Worth caring about and… not. And those categories are killing us.
Here’s what I’m learning, slowly and uncomfortably: needing each other isn’t weakness. It’s the most human thing about us. And if we’re truly all connected—not as some nice spiritual idea, but as actual truth—then hierarchy becomes impossible. How can I rank your suffering against mine when your pain is my pain? How can I decide who’s more deserving when caring for you is the same as caring for myself? How can I create an “us” and “them” when we’re all just… us?
The healing I’m looking for—the healing I think we’re all desperate for—it doesn’t come from being strong enough to handle everything alone. It comes from accepting that I can’t separate myself from my own grief any more than I can separate myself from yours. If we’re all one—if caring for you truly is caring for me—then there’s no “ours” and “theirs.” There’s just… us. All of us. Not this fractured version where some people matter more than others. Where we wait for someone to share our values before we let their death matter. Just us.
Every person suffering is us. Every family being torn apart is us. Every person living in fear is us. Even the people whose views oppose ours, whose politics we think cause harm—they’re us too.
I’m trying to practice believing that. I’m trying to stop sorting people into categories of who deserves my compassion and who doesn’t. It’s hard work. Some days I fail at it completely. But I keep trying. And I’m wondering, wherever you land politically, if you’ll try it with me.
A Practice in Widening Your Circle
This takes about three minutes. You can do it right where you are.
Close your eyes if that feels comfortable. Take three slow breaths. Picture someone you love deeply—someone whose suffering would absolutely devastate you. Just feel that connection for a moment. Notice where you feel it in your body. As you breathe in, take in compassion for yourself, and as you exhale, breathe out compassion for this person.
Now… bring to mind someone in your community. Maybe a neighbor. The person who makes your coffee. Someone you see regularly but don’t really know. Can you extend that same feeling toward them? Can you imagine their suffering mattering to you in the same way? As you breathe in, take in compassion for yourself and as you exhale, breathe out compassion for this person.
Breathe. Widen the circle again.
Think of someone you disagree with. Someone whose views frustrate you or make you angry. Just for this moment, can you recognize their humanity? Can you imagine that their suffering also touches you? As you breathe in, take in compassion for yourself and as you exhale, breathe out compassion for this person.
One more breath. One more widening.
Think of someone you’ll never meet. Someone across the country. Someone grieving. Someone whose death you scrolled past this week without really feeling it. As you breathe in, take in compassion for yourself and as you exhale, breathe out compassion for this person. Can you feel it? That invisible thread connecting you to them? That’s the practice. That’s the work. Not just once, but every day. Widening the circle. Softening the boundaries between “mine” and “theirs.” Practicing until we don’t need someone to share our values for their pain to matter.
Maybe the most healing thing we can do right now—for ourselves, for our communities, for our country—isn’t to keep sorting people into categories of who deserves our care. Maybe it’s to keep expanding our sense of who “us” includes. Until it’s everyone.
Until there’s just… us.
Pull Quote: “I’m trying to stop sorting people into categories of who deserves my compassion and who doesn’t.”
