Difficult Compassion

   Several classmates and I were having a discussion about the kinds of people we would find it challenging to have compassion for or to help.

   Because we are all students in a program for counseling psychology, we acknowledge that the important thing is to help people — so sharing our challenges, difficulties, and solutions is useful.

   I mentioned that I feel challenged when I see a parent treating his/her child cruelly in public. I recounted times I’ve seen a parent grab a child’s arm hard enough to leave red marks, jerking the child with all their strength, and screaming in their face. I’ve wanted to say something, but didn’t trust myself not to cause a scene.

    One of my classmates said she’d encountered the same type of situation. She described what she did.

   “I said to the mother, ‘Gee, it looks like you’re having a hard day.’”

   I commented that I thought that was a very compassionate thing to stay.

   That was the end of the school conversation, but I imagined what could have happened next.

   The mother may have suddenly realized she was over the top. Maybe she would feel guilt, or shame, or defensive, or all of these. Maybe she would get angry, or maybe she would start to cry.

   How far would I be willing to go? Would I be able to get over my selfish anger and be selflessly compassionate? Would I be willing to ask this clearly overwrought mother, “Do you want to talk about it?”

   What if she answered “yes”?

   These are difficult questions that I need to consider as I move forward into my future as a compassion practitioner.

   How far are any of us willing to go in being compassionate?

   It is difficult to suspend judgment, set aside our emotional reactions, and choose compassion as the action to take in a circumstance like the one described above.

   The compassion in the situation would be recognizing not only the suffering of the child, but also the suffering of the mother. By simply saying, “Gee, it looks like you are having a hard day,” my school friend was acting to relieve the suffering of both the child and the mother.

   Some compassionate actions result from difficult decisions, even though the actual act itself is extremely simple.

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   To learn more about thinking and acting compassionately, go to: www.CompassionSpace.com.