Sharing Compassion (in Today's World)

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-Albert Einstein


In this age of division, is it possible that compassion is our key to somehow finding unity once more?  Some of our leaders want us to think that in order to end division, we must "defeat" those who disagree with us.  Others feel that the key to unity is finding common ground even among our division and disagreement, to acknowledge the rights that others have to think and feel as they do, to accept them and their thoughts, and to work together even when we disagree on some points.

Compassion is "feeling with" someone, trying to understand their actions and thoughts and motivations.  It's rather easy to feel compassion for someone who obviously deserves it--the person who's been injured, the friend who has lost their home, the someone who has been abused.  But when we can't easily see the actual sadness, when we don't know the sources of a person's problems, it can be much more difficult.  That person who is against what I'm for more than likely has had some very poor teachers in their life, people who taught them to hate and to resent rather than to love and respect.  And we don't know what led them to actually believe this teacher, to follow their advice.  But it's very possible that even though this person is doing bad things, they're in great pain themselves, and it may be that pain that's leading them to hate, to judge, to harm others.

Since we can never really know what's going on in another's life, it seems that the most effective approach we can take is to make compassion our default response.  That doesn't mean that we should accept and approve of all that other people do, but if we can act around them with compassion, then we can understand that their harmful actions may be the result of great pain in their lives, rather than character flaws or simply being "wrong" or "stupid."

Many people have received poor educations, and it would be unfair of us to judge their words or actions by the same standards that we would expect from someone who's been educated deeply and broadly.  Some people are so afraid of everything that they base their prejudices and biases on their fear, and not on anything concrete or even logical.  And most of them never realize just how much power they give to their own fears.

In a world in which it seems like compassion is dying, just who's going to keep it alive?  Well, I can, and you can.  We're not obligated to do so, of course, but compassion sure seems important enough to me that I want to do all that I can to make sure that it doesn't disappear completely from humanity.  I must foster it, maintain it, share it freely--even with those who don't "seem" to deserve it, and let it be a guiding force in my own life if I'm ever going to have the chance to call myself a "compassionate person."  And on the day that I die, that's a term that I hope more than one person uses to describe who I was when I was here.