Contempt is indifference or disdain for the behavior or hurt of others, due to their perceived lower moral inferiority or general unworthiness. Because the experience of contempt is fueled by adrenalin, it makes you feel temporarily more confident and self-righteous, but at the same time, less humane, and to the extent that it violates your deeper values of kindness and compassion, more vulnerable to unconscious guilt, shame, and anxiety. ( Steve Stosny)
Contempt: (meaning): Lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense scorn.
This morning a nor’easter is heading up the coast, so, weather freak that I am, I arose early in hopes of catching a few snow flakes myself, and to enjoy the semi-hysterical weather news. Hunkered down, wrapped around a quilt and a hot cup of coffee in the darkened living room, I was prepared to enjoy. The weather news, in its best disaster-mode-form was indeed suitably satisfying, but I made the mistake of watching the rest of the news as well, and ended up (again — will I ever learn?) enraged by the proclivities of our leaders. Immediately, fueled by the adrenalin charge we always get from the experience of feeling contempt, I took care of all the indoor animals (who were delighted by such early morning largesse), and then went out to the barn and kicked all those animals out into the cold, snow-chilled air (they were not so delighted to be awakened so early, squawking loudly in protest). Then I made a big breakfast, and from my lofty perch of moral, emotional, and intellectual superiority, sat glaring at my hapless and sleepy husband. You can imagine how well that went.
Oh, crap. Indeed our leaders could probably stand to clean up their act, but here I am, projecting again, furious at someone else, because of what I despise and fear in myself. And even worse, now I’m anxious and depressed since I’m violating my deeper values having to do with kindness and compassion — it’s almost impossible, I find, to like yourself as much as you deserve when you’re feeling contempt.
And so I’ve spent the last hour chewing humble pie, reminding myself of the human fraility that we all share. I know the antidote for contempt, and the resulting separation I experience from others, is compassion and appreciation, and simply wishing happiness, health, well-being, harmony, love, safety, and protection to others in general, and especially to the object of my contempt. But sometimes I just willfully want to hold on to my “mad.” It’s hard to be grown-up.
And maybe, on this day, I can take a lesson from the barn-yard and my animals about compassion and empathy. I once had a cat, a beautiful silver Angora who shared graduate school and early married days with me. She matched a foul temper with a tender and exquisite sensitivity to my moods, and would sit nearby and cry real tears when I was distressed. When my husband and I had the first fight of our married life, she carefully and deliberately proceeded to shred his trousered leg. No brooding on anger and injustice for her.
And we have recently acquired a new gaggle of guineas, a quirky bird, I’ve found, that takes a strong exception to being corralled or domesticated. Loud, goofy-looking, and flocking, they are critters that truly dance to their own drummer. For a long time, Mr. Guinea was our lone bird, the only survivor of a previous gaggle destroyed by foxes, and he freely roamed the farm, patrolling, giving warnings, keeping the vehicles safe from attack and sometimes use-by-owner (he was a little overly attached to looking at his reflection in hubcaps). When our new crew arrived on the scene, he raced in circles around the carrying crate emitting loud raucous guinea-shrieks of what seemed like amazed delight. And he relinquished his prized freedom-to-roam, voluntarily following them into the confined pen in which we’re keeping them until they get used to it as a “home” to which they can return when we let them loose to roam the land also. He cares for their hysterical distress in being in unfamiliar digs by gently stroking beaks, and murmuring what sound like reassuring purrs. I notice him at times standing at the fence, looking longingly at the early spring grass, but he never tries to escape or leave his new “kin-dom.”
What do my cat and this quirky character with a brain the size of a lentil have to teach me about empathy and compassion? Surely, if she weeps for me, and he can give up so much for the sake of relationship, if he can care gently and with seeming compassion for the foibles and unpleasantness of his “others,” surely I can look beyond my own self-righteous sense of how things oughta be in my world. In the pursuit of justice and balance, I do not have to demonize another. I CAN choose tenderness, patience, consideration, kindness, and compassion, rather than giving in to contempt and the need to be right.
