A woman repeatedly sat next to me during a weekend workshop and each time immediately began to talk. She talked about the weather outside (“pretty nice”), the temperature in the room (“too cold”) and the highlights from the previous session, for her (“amazingly relevant”). I listened but felt a tad irritated that she rarely took a breath for my sharing.

At one point on the second day of the workshop, we were asked to find a partner and she grabbed my arm. From that time together, I learned that she is just now getting back to normal life after finishing several months of cancer treatments. She explained that she is so excited to be around “regular” people again and can hardly contain her excitement to be learning new things to apply to her “new life” on the other side of her ordeal.

As she talked, my heart melted and all my irritability with her vanished. At the end of the weekend she told me that she was scared to come to this workshop without knowing anyone but that I had made her feel welcome. With sincerity, I told her that she had “made” my weekend.

As I settled into listening to her, she didn’t know it, but she helped me make a hairpin turn from irritation to compassion.

I went to a store in order to purchase thirty gift cards for families at Partnership Village. A young woman at the store helped me find the card with the amount we wanted and led me to her cash register.

I noticed that the heavy floor mat that usually provided comfort for the cashiers was not on her side but on my side of the counter. I asked her about this and she smiled and said: “I have a lot of elderly customers and they need it more than I do.” Then she asked me who I was purchasing the cards for and I told her about the transitional housing just a few miles away and described our tutoring program. Her face lit up and she asked about the tutoring. She said maybe she could adjust her hours and bring over her teenage daughter and they could both tutor.

As I wrote my name and phone number on a card, she said she is only able to support her family because “someone once helped me.”

This woman taught me how living is giving, when we live out of the compassion of our hearts.

After a long day of teaching and then meeting with the leaders of a program in Boston, I found my way to a Bed and Breakfast that I had discovered online. The neighborhood seemed sketchy but all I wanted was a hot bath, something to eat, and a bed. The nervous young man at the desk apologized as he informed me that the parking was several blocks away at the Holiday Inn and would cost $20. When I returned from that chore, with suitcase dragging behind, he showed me to the room and the bathroom (down the hall). I asked about breakfast and he pointed to an old toaster on a side table next to the front desk. I wondered if I needed to bring my own bread. He showed me the remote for the rather small and old TV but then the TV did not work. As I waited in the hallway for him to fix the TV I noticed signs on the walls with dire warnings about possessions and locking doors. My frustration came to a head as he crawled under the bed to check on the TV cables and pulled out some wadded up kleenex from below. As I stepped out in the hallway again I began to write my scathing review to post on the internet. Then I heard the manager speak very harshly to the young man about getting him out of bed to help with the TV. My heart softened for the young man and for the whole sorry situation. After the manager left I said: “I hope you are not in trouble.” He replied: “He’s my Dad—he gets over it.” While the situation did not change, my heart underwent a major transformation as I considered the life of this young man. I said a prayer for him and slipped under the covers—trying hard not to think of bedbugs!

I set up the room to teach a class on Compassion. I was sorting through the handouts and a woman came into the building. I asked her if she was “looking for Compassion”? She said with enthusiasm: “Oh yes! Please!” I asked her name and noted she was not on the class roster. She said that she “had to talk to someone—a woman—and right now!” I realized she was not in the class. I told her I had 10 minutes before class began and then I had to go and teach a Compassion class. We went into another room and she began:  she was on a 30-day notice at work, she had blood in her urine, she was scared she was not going to have health insurance, and finally, she went to a male doctor and he was horrible to her. Nine minutes were gone and I stood up and gave her a phone number of a nurse to call. She asked—with raised eyebrows: “Can I take the Compassion class?” I replied: “No we are in week number four, maybe next term.” She said: “Oh, I have missed compassion?” And I said: “Yes, I believe you have missed compassion.”

When do we take action?  When do we stop everything and turn to the other and ask with an open heart “Say more”. How do we remain balanced, vital and healthy in the midst of it all?

A woman from the audience started her question with hesitation: “I hate to be negative when everyone seems so positive but here is my question.” She sighed and started to talk about a person at work she said was “toxic” and “impossible” and just a “scoundrel.” She felt betrayed by this person. She was not sure, but she felt like “the intelligence of the heart” (my topic for the evening) was in “dangerous territory” with this person. At the end of the evening many people surrounded her—perhaps sharing their own story of dealing with “scoundrels” in their lives. When we shift to our heart’s intelligence, we expand our capacity to connect with ourselves, and this allows us to more readily engage with others. We note what bothers us most in the “enemy” and then gently ask “where do I see that in myself?”. We can then relax into some kind of self-forgiveness and into the potential to lighten our shadowy burden. Connecting with our troublesome neighbor, begins with connecting with ourselves—with tender compassion. And this is the work of the heart which helps us make the hairpin turns in our lives.

One of my high school teachers liked to tell us: “Life is like a big bowl of vegetable soup—with a hair in it.” I experienced this saying once again this week as two printing errors surfaced in a major publication. Here is what I noticed: First my whole body flooded with a physical response when I read the initial e-mail. Then my mind went crazy with thoughts: “Why didn’t I catch this? How could I have not seen this? Why am I alive?” Then I slipped into a coma of blame: “She should have caught this” and “I am such a lazy proof reader.” I recognized the old pattern and knew I was moving in the wrong direction. I stood up and stepped outside and started to walk towards the corner mailbox. I felt the spring air on my face and noticed the variety of bird songs. I kept my body in motion. I touched the mailbox, turned around and began the journey back. This is a hairpin turn. Within minutes of learning about “the hair in the vegetable soup” I was calm and considering possible creative alternatives. The three steps I know to take when mistakes happen (everyday in our lives): 1) Notice the physical sensation and pause to acknowledge; 2) become aware of polluting thoughts of self-blame and of recrimination towards others; and 3) move and become present to the body and shift to neutral. Wait just a few minutes. Turn around. Come home. Begin Again.