Finding Compassion for Difficult People

(screen hissing) (mouse clicking) (tranquil music) Headspace Studio. (pensive music) (birds tweeting) Hi, friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday. I had a neighbor once who loved to blast music at the worst times. Like, I'd be sitting down to write and suddenly boom, it was a full-blown concert next door. At first, I was just annoyed, then I was really annoyed, but at some point, I realized my frustration wasn't changing anything. It was just making me miserable. So I did what any normal person would do. I complained about it to my partner until finally, there was a confrontation. I think we all have that one person in our lives, right? The one who seems to push every button we have. Maybe it's a coworker, a family member, or just some random person who rubs you the wrong way. Today we're talking about how mindfulness can actually help us feel compassion for those people, even when we don't want to. Sometimes the people who frustrate us the most are our greatest teachers, or at least that's what they say. Personally, I'd rather not have a 7 AM life lesson in patience while my neighbor blasts show tunes at full volume. But here we are. Loving kindness meditation is supposed to help, right? It teaches us to send compassion, not just to ourselves, but to the people who challenge us the most. And I tried. I really did. Every morning, I'd sit, breathe, repeat, "May you be happy. May you be at peace." And every morning, as soon as I'd finish, I'd walk into the living room to find Tory peacefully sipping his coffee while I passionately vented about how my brain could not function over the soundtrack of "Les Miserables" shaking our walls. After a few weeks of this, Tory, the ever reasonable one, suggested we just go over and ask politely if they could maybe possibly turn the volume down. Simple enough, right? Except, here's the thing. I love music. And while show tunes aren't exactly my genre of choice, the thought of stifling someone living their best life gave me pause. So what was this really about? It was about the fact that my office window faced directly into their living room where this very impressive, and let's be honest, kind of obnoxious sound system was doing its best to live its best life. So we took Tory's approach. We grabbed a bottle of wine and walked over, ready to have an actual conversation. What we found out changed everything. Our neighbor shared that his mother had recently passed, and that music, the show tunes that had been driving me up the wall, that was her favorite genre. It was his way of keeping a piece of her close, of holding onto something that reminded him of her love and part of his morning practice. Suddenly, my frustration didn't seem so important anymore. Could I have still said, "Wow, that's amazing, but maybe turn...