Of Compassion and Pragmatism

Life is funny. Of course you need pragmatism to survive anything that comes in your life. That is a given. Unless you have someone taking care of you financially and in all ways this is true. However, in order to want to survive at all you need to have first compassion for yourself and then compassion for others. Without these two things you won't tend to stay alive very long and others might not want you to stay alive either.

So, even if you don't care about yourself at all.(Many men and women feel this way). If you care about the survival of even one other person in your life it behooves you to develop compassion for yourself just so you can take care of them if nothing else. And along the way what usually happens is you find more people (usually your new children) or others that need you to care for them. This is one of the main ways people tend to develop the capacity for compassion for themselves and others. Because once one sees that we are all in this thing together and that we all need each other to survive, developing compassion in addition to pragmatism becomes necessary for all our mutual survival and potential happiness.