Compassion is Easy

   Two years ago, when I first became acquainted with the topic of Compassion as a field of study and personal growth, I thought, “Nice idea. Glad someone is looking into this.”

   My concept of Compassion was that it was something that people like the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa and Jesus did … way beyond me. Compassion was giving away lots of time and money to help people less fortunate than me … and I didn’t have either. Compassion meant being kind and patient and loving all day, every day … even on my worst days.

   Who could do that? Certainly not me.

   It turned out there were some fallacies in my assumptions: 1) I don’t have to be a Compassion Hero to start learning how to practice compassion, 2) Being a selfless, full-time volunteer or philanthropist doesn’t necessarily qualify as being compassionate, and, 3) Learning compassion doesn’t have requirements for behavior. Further, having unrealistic expectations was the surest way to ensure that I wouldn’t even try.

   I was in school studying for a Master’s in psychology, and one of the required classes was Research Methods, lots of statistics and data, yuck. Except the data set we used was from an online survey on Compassion. How cool is that?

   It was by looking at the results of this survey that it occurred to me that there were as many different kinds of compassion as there were people who practiced it. There’s the near-universal, instinctual compassionate response to seeing a child fall and skin their knee. There’s the desire to comfort a grieving friend. There’s the shared anguish and mutual commiserating at the human suffering from a natural disaster.

   These examples showed me that compassion is a natural human response to fellow beings in pain: We notice another’s suffering, and we feel moved to act to relieve that suffering. A look. A touch. A kind word. It doesn't have to be much.

   Simple: Notice, Feel, Act.

   Notice. Before I can begin to feel any compassion for another person I have to get out of my own head and look around. I have to acknowledge that I am living in a world populated by other people who also have worries, concerns, feelings, and fears.

   Feel. Instead of just noticing how I feel about me and my life, I have to recognize that my fellow beings also live in a world steeped in their own feelings about themselves and their lives.

   Act. In addition to doing things to make myself feel better, I need to be willing to do something for someone else, too.

   Let’s try out a couple scenarios common to Western existence:

   I’m standing in a grocery store checkout line with a cart full of stuff. Behind me is a woman with a cranky baby and a basket with just a few items. The self-centered, uncompassionate me could get irritated that the woman can’t keep her child quiet. Alternatively, I can notice that she only has a few items and I have a full cart. I can feel that she is frustrated that her baby isn’t happy and she’s behind someone with a lot of items to check out. I can act by offering to let her go in front of me, thus partially relieving some of her suffering.

   I’m walking behind someone with an armload of books and we reach a big door. They reach for the door handle and one of the books falls off the stack. I could stand there and silently fume at their ineptitude and having to wait. Or, I could notice that their hands are full, while mine are empty. I could feel a kinship with this fellow student who’s embarrassed at dropping a book, and possibly late for class. I could act by picking up the fallen book and offering to open the door, partially relieving their suffering.

   These are just small examples, but simples ones to envision. There are endless opportunities every day to notice, feel, and act in a compassionate manner.

   It doesn’t take much, and the cumulative effects are easy to imagine.

~*~

   For a plethora of information, online books, papers, and an online survey on compassion, go to: www.CompassionSpace.com.