The Diminishing Art of Compassion

I’ve been spending the past few weeks consolidating the Blind Tiger ‘offer’ for a number of reasons. It has become easier to better define the sum of the parts of what and who we are – but we’ve also got ourselves into a position where each of those strands are ‘up and running’, funded and operational.

I have also started to identify people who can come on board to help me realise our vision. As a self confessed lone wolf and one man band that isn’t an easy step. I can easily excuse my lack of collaboration as being down to the fact that, despite my Blind Tiger branding, people still expect me ‘Mike’ to be front and centre and, whilst that is often the reality, I have been unpicking whether that is actually the case or simply a symptom of my need to control – and be seen. Both are probably unavoidable aspects of my personality but have also contributed to my ‘success’.

That said I’ve been trying to strip back the key attributes of people that would want to work with.

There are obvious skillsets that are needed – resilience, creativity, risk taking and the like, but I keep coming back to a fundamental and yet, it feels a rare commodity… that thing we call ‘compassion’. I see that as central to Blind Tiger. It goes beyond kindness, respect and empathy. It is the beating heart of Blind Tiger.

I like to dissect words – and I probably often do so to shoehorn them into my work as I’m not clever enough – or have a wide enough vocabulary to know the right word at the right time.

But in this case, I like to define compassion as a two pronged weapon for change… the ‘COM’ being that connection to community and commonality – an empathy and deep seated recognition of themes and narratives that help people to resonate with each other and the com-prehension that makes us communicate their story. To an extent this aspect is one that can be articulated quite easily – it underpins most of what Blind Tiger does – it is what we do.

But the other half of the word ‘PASSION’ – is less easy to source – it is the WAY that we do things and it has to come from somewhere else. It is in the tears shed when hearing a story shared or belly laughter of a collective moment. It is about love – anger – voice. It is in everyone – but, like one of its languages, creativity, it is somehow dampened out of us. Emotion = Weakness and we should be seen – not heard. We need to re-awaken it. We need to shine and – as Marianne Williamson observed, in doing so – give permission for others to do the same. We need to bask in brilliance and be fed by the energy – the lifeblood of happiness.

To an extent we need to un-learn much of what we have been taught. Even the arts – surely a beautiful manifestation of passion and connection are taught and learned by skill and theory. A musician is unable to progress above practical grade 5 unless they passed the required theory test. Absolute elitist nonsense. Where is the joy, the freedom, the passion in that? Where is the encouragement – other than amongst a diminishing number of music teachers to be individual – to be different – to sing your own song?

“Young children are wonderfully confident in their own imaginations … Most of us lose this confidence as we grow up” Sir Ken Robinson

Passionate is the way that Blind Tiger do things. It isn’t always neat and tidy – and certainly isn’t linear. But it is essential. It inspires, gives confidence, builds a can-do landscape and a crescendo of individual and collective belief. I’m building a collective of creatives with passion at their core. Less art – more heart. Less me – and more us.

Blind Tiger is passion incarnate – and with it we roar louder everyday.