What is the meaning of mercy?

My friend told me a story of a lone woman who came into a bar in South Jakarta, who was drinking excessively before she started vomiting. Then collapsed; and when she came to, several concerned people asked her where she lived, but she could not remember.

Then, a couple, famous for being social empowerment activists, was saddled with huge debt. They were unable to repay the vendors who worked for them at a big event and the last time I heard, a debt collector was chasing them, with the bank threatening to confiscate their house if they failed to pay back their loans.

Fishy stories of how this couple used social justice only to puff up their public image while not paying their loans, as well as how the husband allegedly extorted a wealthy businessman for money, started to circulate. Pictures and videos documenting their lavish lifestyle, with their posh house, fancy gadgets and overseas trips, are still available on social media.

My initial reaction to these stories? A sense of superiority, marked by condescension: Oh, poor people, I thought. Back then, I had little empathy for excessive behavior. Excessive drinking, excessive spending, excessive lifestyles.

Until it was my turn to screw myself up big time. I was a productive and creative person who went through an existential crisis: My achievements and people’s praise could not fill the void within.

Feeling disconnected and alienated in a highly competitive society with a lack of genuine connections, I turned to hedonism to soothe myself. You can guess what happened to me next, as often happens in similar cases: First my mental and physical health declined. Then I started to bleed financially; I failed to pay some principal bills and had to borrow money from here and there (which was very embarrassing). Then, voilá, my work started falling apart.

Sounds familiar? This kind of phoenix crashing into the ashes story is pervasive in our materialistic and atomistic urban, industrial society. American writer Marianne Williamson described in her 2017 book Tears to Triumph: the Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment the case of a highly successful man who got caught in a financial crisis; he started coping by developing some sort of substance addiction, which ultimately destroyed his career, marriage and social ties. Typical 21st century version of the Bible’s book of Job.

How do we end up like this, grasping for other people’s approval by amassing excessive wealth or striving for professional success to the point of destroying ourselves in the process?

American psychologist Tara Brach, who infused her science with the mystical teachings of all world spiritual traditions, warns in her YouTube lectures of what she called “false refuge”. We humans are prone to be twerked by a deep sense of alienation and fear, fooling us into believing the many illusions offered by the material world, embarking on our obsession with excess, instead of pursuing what she instead calls “true refuge”, namely using our creativity and love to genuinely connect with other people.

Alas, instead of striving for deep connections, we are desperate to get people’s approval. Instead of earning just enough money and crafting just enough achievements to make ourselves feel creative and accomplished, we hoard our stuff and become overly ambitious in a destructive manner. We think these will make us happy. This culture also tells us that the sky is the limit, that we should never feel enough, that we should always aspire to top ourselves and other people.

As a matter of fact, there is a limit to our physical and mental energy. When we become excessive in our pursuit of these external things, an existential crisis will unavoidably arise, resulting in the breakdowns of our life’s most important domains outlined above: health, relationships and work.

Many of us, including myself, did not learn this lesson until it was way too late. I was so ashamed of myself in the middle of the multiple crises: How clumsy can someone be in managing his finances that he was late in paying for his laundry services? If people knew this, what would they think of me? Here I was, writing all these essays about humility and the true refuge of human connection; what did all these writings mean when I could not walk the talk? I was riding a train, finishing a public lecture, sensing hot flashes across my body with shame.

Then I remember what Williamson said: We secularize humans living in industrial settings, lacking rituals, through which we can navigate the difficult times of our lives. We also lack mechanisms through which we can make amends for our destructive choices and commit ourselves to be better.

She mentioned atonement, true to her Jewish heritage. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, atonement means reparation for an offense or injury.

So there, inside that train, about to cry out of embarrassment and pain for what I just did with my life and the people who I harmed along the way, conducted my own secularized version of the atonement ritual: Asking the Lord to be shown ways in which I could make amends for my own foolish choices and to wake up out of my own sense of shame so I could gather the courage to mend my life and start anew.

Why is atonement important? We live in a schizophrenic society. On the one hand, we are told to be genuine but on the other hand we are also told that we need to have a certain kind of success or personality in order to really belong to this world. When society’s criterion of belonging fails us, we inevitably become insecure and ashamed and society condemns our sense of insecurity and shame, too.

Brach asserted that our own failings and dysfunctional responses to society’s conflicting messages would bring up the toxic feelings of shame, but she said it was not until we can rise above our shame that we can commit ourselves enough to make real changes in our lives to focus on things that really matter, like genuine connections with other people.

By atoning for our mistakes, we acknowledge that we have messed up and to have the humility to think that everybody can make this kind of mistake. By that awareness, we then ask that we gain a higher level of consciousness having learned the lessons of our own fallibility as mortal humans.

I believe that people with exceptionally high emotional, intellectual and spiritual quotients, who thereby are immune to this kind of self-destructive slump, are rare indeed. As for us, the average and ordinary people, we may fall into this kind of excessive behavior now and then due to our personal turbulence, so it is important to be compassionate with yourself when this happens to you. Before you can muster up the energy to be better and learn from your mistakes, you first have to forgive yourself and others.

Thankfully, instead of castigating me for my mistakes, the people whom I approached during my crisis helped me with open arms. Here I have learned an important lesson about mercy, which means I will never again act condescendingly to people who indulge in excessive behavior to fill the void they have inside, like I did in the past with the two stories I mentioned above, because I know all too well that I, too, am not infallible from such failings. Our experience of suffering can give us X-ray vision, which helps us to empathize and be more compassionate toward others’ suffering.

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