320. Imperfect Acts

My awareness is always limited and never complete. If I pay attention to my experiences, then my awareness will continuously expand throughout my lifetime. But this is little consolation, because I must act today. I must act using the awareness I have right now, even though it’s lacking.

The consequence of this is that my actions will almost always be imperfect. Since there is still so much I cannot see, the things I do will not always be compassionate. In some cases, my actions will even be harmful to myself or others. I need to remember my own fallibility, especially when I think I’m seeing everything clearly.

If I’m sensitive to the possibility of error, then I gain the chance to reverse course when I realize I’m acting improperly. I also gain an important opportunity to expand my awareness. By seeing that I haven’t done what was truly needed, I can learn something further about compassion and what it demands. My own mistakes are often the most salient and immediate means to valuable new awareness.

It is by acting and failing that my awareness quickly expands. This is why I must take action, even though I know my awareness is incomplete. I cannot allow the chance of failure to paralyze me and inhibit the possibility that my actions will succeed. The risk of harm is almost never greater than the overwhelming need for compassion. To allow this need to go unmet, both for myself and for the people around me, would be a more significant error.

I need to allow myself to act through my awareness and towards compassion even though my actions are unlikely to be the best ones in hindsight. I also need to reflect on how my past actions fell short of what compassion requires. In doing so, I allow my awareness to grow, which will help me take better actions in the future. It is through this continuous process of action, reflection, and growth that I can gradually become a more compassionate being.