The pathway of compassion is traveled one step at a time. This seems trite the moment you hear it, but much like a recovery model begs you to understand we can only work on today, the fostering and nurturing of compassion within is firmly rooted to the now. The thing is (that is to say the secret of it is), we can transmute that now into always, we can one step, two step, foxtrot our way along a continuum which transcends time and space. Figuratively of course, but there is still something in the notion that we might apply our grace retrospectively – in order to find compassion for the past, as well as our present.

During my time accumulating experience, and in applying that experience, in order to gain even greater experience (note the key word here), I had the fortune of working amongst a diverse population that encompassed much of the human condition. This is relevant because it is really only through witness and trial that we might come to begin to understand something about an other. Non-pejorative sense. In working with children I gained compassion for adults, and in working with adults I gained compassion for our finality, and in working with older people I enhanced my understanding of the fragility and wonder of childhood, through their eyes. Across disorders or dilemmas I have come to understand some thing about an other, simply by witnessing.

Back to the steps. The simplest (read smallest) step I make as a practitioner is to imagine my client forward or backwards in time. No revelation, indeed it is practiced by concerned parties: ‘if you keep this up you’ll end up as X!’ or ‘bet you didn’t want to grow up to be X when you were a kid huh?’ Simple, neat, punitive thinking. Cause and effect. But the etiology always- always this: that extra step to follow back, even if as an exercise of compassion, to where the spark we lament as absent in others may have left, or been crushed, or stolen. Like all good tales, our clients’ lives have some form of prison, some form of villain, and some wish for magical change- of hope. I do the following: the parents I meet who have wronged their children – I imagine who they might have been as children, and how they might have hoped for someone to come help them; the children I work with (so as to prevent fallout) – I imagine the adults they will become, filled with hindsight, and I work with that concept of change; the obtrusive, difficult client I imagine across years, I imagine them trapped the longest, and perhaps alone the longest – so I give them my patience. This represents my own personal mantra: I have hope and belief in the simplest of all wishes, that I can be a better person, and that I am not alone in this.

To give people time, an opportunity to retrace their steps, or to ‘take another shot’ at a situation is a gift worth giving.