170.8 Compassion and Honesty, Hmm...

Yesterday I went over to our community pool to do my workout. A very nice guy was there who hadn't seen me in a long time. As we were chatting, he interrupted himself and said, "You've lost weight!" And, then he asked me how I did it. I was beginning to tell him about how I had made changes in my eating habits, etc., when he said that he could never change his eating habits, in light of his love of butter. And then he shared that his cholesterol was very high and that he was trying to decide if he should start taking drugs to treat that. When I suggested that he could start by eating just half the amount of butter he usually does, you would have thought I had suggested that he eat that food that you find most repulsive! And then he continued to tell me more about his love of butter, and that he had been a nutrition major in college, but now that he was older, he just didn't want to deal with any of the health/weight issues.

In spite of the fact that one of my personal goals is to be more compassionate, I heard myself, in all my compassion :), blurt out, "Do you want to eat butter or die?" I've been where this man is. I've been in that mental place where I believed that making change seemed highly undesirable and was probably not possible.

When I said I had to move on and start my workout, he smiled and said,"You have changed! You should start a class about weight loss here at the community center". I told him that I was thinking about doing just that, with compassion. I know I am making fun of myself and my need to be more compassionate, but for me it's serious business. So now my goal is to be compassionately honest. I think that's possible, just like losing weight. I'm working on it.