Importance of Compassion

In the warm streets of Miami where the weather is always pleasant and the palm trees brush against each other in the breeze, you’d think, how could there be any anger in paradise? Well, leave it to a lack of compassion in today’s society to turn things a little “cold,” even in the warm streets of Miami. So I’ve come to learn there is an unhealthy amount of anger and fear throughout our community. “You can’t let anyone know what you’re up to, how you’re feeling, or where you’re headed next, you never know who’s out to get you,” an old friend aggressively told me as we drank mimosas on a sunny Sunday afternoon, as we often do in Miami.

Great religious leaders like God or Buddha tell us that love and compassion are innate feelings, yet it seems that we’re all at war with each other all the time. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion,” in the words of the great Dalai Lama XIV. Compassion is so important to society and, more so, to humanity, but as time goes by, I feel people get lost in their suffering, and they may forget we are all humans with the same set of emotions.

Compassion can simply be defined as recognizing suffering and taking action to alleviate it. Oftentimes, from what I have observed, we can never really give advice without going through a similar situation ourselves. Someone can only try to relate to something so much if they have never experienced it. I think people don’t learn the premise of compassion until they have endured suffering themselves; whether something is done to them by a family member, getting fired from a job, experiencing heartbreak, internal struggles, or really anything else in between. I would say I never really understood the importance of having compassion until I went through some traumatic experiences of my own in life.

I went through a time where I didn’t have the motivation to do much but lay in bed and I would only get up to refill my glass of milk on my bedside table and get more Oreos. Ironically, I ended up learning a lot during that time. After days of enduring my own misery of heartbreak, I eventually grabbed my diary from my nightstand, instead of that evil plate of Oreos, and wrote down “I do not like how I'm currently feeling, although I know it will pass… How do I go about changing this?” From that moment on, I began reading dozens of self-help books and started to understand that what I was actually doing, was having compassion for myself. Over time I learned about dealing with my emotions, having compassion for myself and for others, and overall, just living a more peaceful life.

Throughout this journey of learning to look at life through a different lens, I first thought “so what, am I just supposed to feel bad for everyone I see suffering… what if they’re faking it for attention?” Obviously, as I learned over time, that is not the point at all. If they are faking their suffering, it’s nothing I can control; all I can do is demonstrate compassion and support, and then walk away hoping and praying that they stop going through whatever it is they are going through, even if they are really only seeking attention for their suffering. Compassion is not feeling pity for others, not even the homeless man on the street and judging him in your head, but simply acknowledging him and his struggles as a human being. As Martin Luther King Jr said compassion motivates us not to fling a coin to a beggar but to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.

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There are only two main emotions that drive all of our actions: love and fear. I would say a lack of compassion can also stem from fear. The thoughts I had mentioned previously “...what if they're faking for attention,” that derives from my own fear of feeling vulnerable and used. It can possibly be described as a subconscious fear because showing compassion or empathy can require you to be vulnerable, which some may interpret as “being too soft,” which in my own head, can then lead to “getting screwed over” in the long run. So it all becomes a domino effect based on fear. When society’s main focus is success, wealth, material possessions, and individualism, I can understand where this fear of vulnerability comes from. We tend to forget the important traits that keep us sane or at the very least, keep us from throwing a drink at the next person that rubs us the wrong way. It’s simple compassion– being mindful of what the person next to you may be experiencing at that point or even that day in their life.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, I have seen just how important compassion is in our society. I think we can see the perfect example of lacking compassion when masks became mandatory and we saw the reaction of a big portion of the population. The debate of whether or not you should wear a mask depends on the individual you would ask– although it can be very telling of those who refuse. I get it, no one enjoys the annoying chin acne caused by the mask or as I’d like to call it “maskne,” or running on a treadmill with a mask on as if running is not dreadful enough. But when it comes down to it, wearing a mask is simply to protect the grandma who only leaves her house every so often to get more groceries and is pushing her shopping cart down the Publix aisle; it is not only to protect yourself. This is a simple act of compassion that takes nothing away from you but can demonstrate an act of giving in a very impactful way. I think a part of why we have seen a lack of compassion for others during this pandemic came from constantly watching our previous President on our living room TVs going on a tangent on how this virus was a hoax, rather than the media sharing stories of families that had just lost a loved one to the coronavirus.

The pandemic did not create more of a divide than there already was. But as a society, I think the vast majority of us learned how much more important it was for us to come together. The idea that we saw so many public figures, celebrities, large corporations, and so many others with a loud platform sharing posts on social media or creating commercials touting the benefits of wearing masks and being mindful of helping to protect others, clearly exemplified our capability as a society to show great amounts of compassion. Coming together as a society and sharing information on how we can not only protect ourselves but others too and control the spread of the virus to the best of our abilities.

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I have noticed as I grow and meet new people that there is this common theme of feeling that everyone is out to get you; I would say this stems from the fear of going through some sort of struggle. While yes, everyone has the right to want to become successful or wealthy, we should not fear the obstacles we go through to get there– these things are inevitable and can teach us so many life lessons, both about ourselves, as well as others. As I once was that person, learning about self-compassion I learn to feel for those types of people. Being a genuine and kind person has many more benefits than walking around constantly looking over your shoulder with the fear in your eyes as if someone is coming after you. When we learn to be compassionate, we often learn other important characteristics, such as empathy and gratitude. As I learn and set the foundation for these core values in my life, I start to understand how important they are in every aspect of my life. Personally, being able to make others happy and feel comfortable around me by simply being a good person just feels much better than being cold and closed off to the world.

As I mentioned previously, I do feel that we often do not learn the importance of compassion until we have endured some sort of pain or suffering, although I don’t think it will always necessarily be the case as you grow and learn about the complexity of implementing compassion into your everyday life. As I become more mindful of the present and how I go about my day, I find myself discovering new opportunities to be compassionate every single day, even in the smallest of ways; it is still meaningful.

As I go back and forth with my thoughts and my keyboard, deleting and retyping, and getting frustrated with not being able to form a legible sentence, I can still take a second to remind myself that I am enough for the moment and more than capable of being a great writer. This is compassion.