Having compassion for yourself and others can often save your life

How?

Often many people are put down in various ways and lose their sense of self in a healthy way growing up.

As I was a child in the 1950s and early 1960s (I was 21 in 1969) and saw people's lives destroyed and many people literally self destruct by the time they reached 10 or 20 years of age I started to notice how some people believed the negative things others said about them. And other people had parents like mine who reinforced ONLY the positive things in their lives.

So, this made people who were put down a lot sort of like Ticking time bombs that could kill themselves or others on a moments notice or they could get very violent and take themselves or others out and send people to the hospital a lot too.

And others like myself stayed strong because they had good parents who reinforced positive behaviors and attitudes always.

It wasn't always religious people that were like this either. People could have good values whether they believed in any religion or not as long as they taught compassion for themselves and each other to their children along the way.

This was very noticeable in places like Los Angeles where I grew up where there likely are more people who are agnostic or even atheistic in big cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco or San Diego than out in the country in small towns everywhere.

In bigger cities people often didn't have to pretend to believe in the local church or minister like they sometimes do in smaller towns across the U.S. especially in the 1950s and early 1960s and before that. 

So, learning to have compassion for yourself and others saves not only your life but others as well along the way, (especially between the ages of about 12 and 30).