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The Big Squeeze

I

f we wantto communicate and we have a strong
aspiration to help others—on the level of social
action, on the level of our family, at work in our com-
munity, or we just want to be there for people when
they need us—then sooner or later we’re going to ex-
perience the big squeeze. Our ideals and the reality
of what’s really happening don’t match. We feel as if
we’re between the fingers of a big giant who is
squeezing us. We find ourselves between a rock and
a hard place.
There is often a discrepancy between our ideals
and what we actually encounter. For instance, with
raising children, we have a lot of good ideas, but
sometimes it’s very challenging to put together all
the good ideas with the way our children really are,
there at the breakfast table with food all over them-
selves. Or with meditation, have you noticed how
difficult it is to actually feel emotions without get-
ting totally swept away by them, or how difficult it
is simply to cultivate friendliness toward yourself
when you’re feeling completely miserable or pan-
icked or caught up?

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