August 28th, 2026
Can you truly call yourself a compassionate person if you can’t share that compassion for the people you believe deserve it the least?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question, but I do think it’s hard candy worth chewing on.
I’ve been working on a meditation practice this week called Just Like You. In it, you sit and think of a person you don’t know very well or, better yet, someone you’re actively in conflict with. Then you spend some time reflecting on the fact that everything you’ve felt in your life – sadness, loss, heartbreak – they’ve felt it, too. They’ve been through things just like you’ve been through things; they know joy and wonder and anxiety and fear just as well as you.
If you do this for a while, it becomes impossible to not feel a radical compassion and consider it in a deeper and more difficult way.
I think Dolly offers a unique perspective to the question I posed. As far as human beings can be, she is universally adored, and I think it’s because she was a genuinely compassionate person. Look: she was pro-Jesus, pro-vaccine, pro-environment, pro-reading, pro-vanity, pro-being-who-you-are, pro-minding-your-own-business, pro-loving-each-other-amen. In some circles, having those qualities makes you some kind of woke, communist libtard. I know, because I’m some of those things and I’ve received the comments and messages I deserve. But in the hands of Dolly, a woman who didn’t just say she cared but took constant action to relieve the suffering of others, those qualities made her an actual angel on Earth and widely recognized as such.
I think many of us know someone like Dolly. I think we know real compassion when we see it. And I think we feel like frauds when we say we care about everyone and “everyone” doesn’t include, like, everyone. I’m not saying that Dolly didn’t talk shit; I don’t have any proof on hand, but she was tough and had little tolerance for bullshit.
The thing is though: she cared. She had to have helped people she didn’t agree with because she helped people she didn’t even know. People who felt the same feelings she had and been through things just like she did. People who, she knew in her heart, were just like her.
The Den 