No bad people, just bad action.

I spent all of last semester researching compassion with a professor. It is a complex construct and it overlaps with a lot of other emotions and psychological states. But one of the things that we spent a lot of time talking about is social cognition, and posed the question, "how do we get people to understand that there are not good and bad people, just good and bad action?"

This all came flooding back into my world at mass on Sunday. The gospel reading (Matthew 13:24-30) was the parable about how weeds were planted by the enemy among the good crops. The priest went to explain about how it may not seem fair that this happens, but a lot of things in life are not fair. Yes, this is a cliche, but a lot of times in life we fixate on that, along with placing the blame. However, figuring out "who started it" or who is to blame for a problem or a situation does not allow us to move forward. What we really need to do is focus on the core of the problem so we can address what is wrong, and move forward.

To me, these two concepts are those things that you can talk about for hours. But right now, they apply to my life in various different ways - in friendships, as a counselor, and as a coordinator. I love it when things start to overlap.