Having compassion one of another
As a teenager, trying to figure out my place in the world
and how to handle my life, I affixed to my bedroom door a small blue sticky
note with the words, “Be kind—everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”[i] scrawled
across it. Amidst my own insecurities, I sensed that the kids I interacted with
at school were likewise struggling to find their place, to discover their
purpose and their plan. They were fighting battles just as real and significant
as the ones I was facing. Perhaps their struggles were different than mine.
Some trials were more visible than others. Some seemed completely foreign to me,
while others I related to perfectly. But everybody was going through something.
And I wanted to be a support, not someone who contributed to the pain. Now, I
won’t say that I perfectly lived up to the mantra that sent me off to school
each morning. Because I didn’t. But that principle has proven to be a rock in
my life as I have grown and continued to face my own challenges. And as I’ve
passed through different experiences in my life, I have spent a great deal of
time pondering that concept of compassion and empathy. And hopefully with
several more decades of pondering and application, I’ll begin to understand.
It’s been about a decade since I first put up that sticky
note (which happens to remain in its same place of honor on my door until this
day—that’s a pretty good adhesive). I’ve learned a little bit more of life in
that time. I’ve seen a little bit more pain, both in my own life and in the
lives of those around me. I’ve come to more fully understand what a “hard
battle” is. And because of that, those simple words have proven even more significant
now than ever before in my life. Because I’ve realized to an even greater extent
just how that statement is—there is not a single person in this world who is
not going through something incredibly difficult. I have interacted with enough
people in a handful of countries to know that each person on earth is facing
his or her own heartache. As I’ve pondered this conundrum of suffering that is
human life, I have come to love the word compassion. I firmly believe that becoming
compassionate is one of the main purposes of human life. We have to learn to
love and to feel with others. We have to be a safe place and build others up.
The very etymology of the word compassion speaks to its
sacred and serious meaning. The Latin “compati” means “to suffer with.” The
modern Russian translation coincides with this: “сострадание” is comprised of “со” meaning ‘with’ and “страдание” meaning ‘suffering.’
Thus, compassion is not merely an ethereal feeling—some detached form of
sympathy or pity for the hardship of another. It is literally feeling the pain
of another and suffering with them.
It is a willingness to climb down into the dark, scary hole of another’s
suffering and feel and suffer with them. Dr. Brene Brown of the University of Houston
describes this very well, stating that empathy is a “sacred space” in which we allow
ourselves to feel with others.[ii] We
don’t merely look down at them from above, but we allow ourselves to remember
what it feels like to suffer. She affirms that “Empathy is a choice, and it’s a
vulnerable choice, because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with
something in myself that knows that feeling.” I love that. We have to
consciously choose to suffer with someone else. That’s not an easy thing to do.
Most of us try to avoid pain at any cost. So agreeing to sit next to someone
and feel their pain takes a deep level of maturity. It takes a lot of love.
Compassion is not easy. But because we each are in such deep need of compassion
in our own lives, we have to learn to
extend it to others.
Often, the battles that we face as humans are fought
secretly, within the solitary confines of our own hearts. Only rarely do we
allow others to glimpse the things that are tearing us apart. Because it’s not
socially acceptable to share with everyone what you’re going through. And it’s hard to talk about the things that hurt.
And so we are silent and try to do things on our own. Yet we occasionally wonder
why people do not come to our aid, why nobody cares. And I have two groups of
thoughts on this subject. First, it goes directly back to the quote on my door:
“Be kind—everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” We don’t always know
when people are suffering. We don’t know what battles they are facing, because
they don’t feel that they are in a position to talk about them with us. But we have to extend to them the kindness that
they need. Just because a coworker didn’t tell us that his father died and his
child is sick doesn’t mean that he can function normally. Just because we are
not a personal friend of the waitress and thus she can’t explain to us that her
boyfriend just broke up with her doesn’t mean that we can afford to treat her
without compassion. Now, I’m not saying that we need to tell every single
person we interact with exactly everything that is going wrong in our lives. (More
on this in a couple paragraphs. Be excited.) But we need to grant others the
benefit of the doubt and recognize that there are difficult things going on in
their lives. We don’t understand the complex situations in which others are
living, and precisely because of that, we have to treat them with more kindness
and care than we might think they deserve. (In fact, there are a couple really
great videos on this that you should watch on this topic. I’ll just put one
here and the other here for you.[iii]
You’re welcome.) Because maybe that man who just cut you off in traffic is
rushing his wife to the hospital to have their first child. Maybe the cashier
at the grocery store who took too long to ring up your groceries just recovered
from a long illness and isn’t yet his former self. Perhaps your boss who
snapped at you this morning is worried sick about her collapsing marriage. The
point is, we don’t know. And we don’t need to know. But we have to be willing
to grant to others the compassion they need.
My second group of thoughts on our silence deals with the absolute
need we have as human beings to talk and connect with other people. If we are
all suffering, if we are all going through difficult things, why do we so often
remain silent about it? (Okay. I’ll admit that I understand exactly why, often being
guilty of this myself. We’re scared of not being understood. We’re scared of
people brushing off our pain. We’re scared of people not showing the compassion
that we crave. Conversely, we sometimes fear that people with overreact and try
to “fix” all of our problems. I get it. But that doesn’t mean it’s always
good.) Silence and loneliness can often fuel the struggles we are facing, as it
seems that we are alone and nobody understands. But as psychologist Dr. Guy
Winch states in his excellent TED talk on emotional first aid,[iv]
when we hit those moments of loneliness, we can’t simply remain silent and wait
for others to reach out to us—we ourselves need to reach out! We have to share
what we’re feeling. We can’t just assume that because we aren’t hearing from
others it means that they have forgotten or don’t care or won’t respond with
compassion to our struggles. Sometimes it’s merely because we ourselves
accidentally took the phone off the hook. Speaking to that same point, Jon
McLaughlin’s beautiful song “We All Need Saving” has for years been one of my
favorites when times get tough.[v] In
particular, I love the lines, “Say what you will, but the time that we fill
while we’re on the earth should not be alone; we were meant to be known.” We
weren’t supposed to go through all of this on our own! We weren’t meant to be constantly
“strong and silent,” bearing alone the various challenges that life throws at
us. We need other people. The recent handbook that the LDS church developed for
missionaries, “Adjusting to Missionary Life” also speaks discusses this idea.[vi] The
booklet states, that if you are feeling lonely, you should “share more,
(because) we feel lonely when we don’t feel known and valued for who we really
are.” And I would dare say that part of who we are is the challenges we are
facing. If we want to be understood by those closest to us, we have to be
willing to share. Part of our need as humans is to open up and to share with
others what is going on. Silence breeds loneliness. And loneliness just makes
the inevitable battles of life more overwhelming.
Now in saying all that, I’m not endorsing going out and
sharing with every stranger on the street that you don’t know how you’re going
to pay next month’s rent. Because there is a time and a place for opening up
and sharing. There has to be a relationship of trust before it will be helpful
to discuss a challenge with someone else. And most of the time, we don’t need
to know every single thing going on in the lives of every single one of our
friends and neighbors. Because that would be way too much information. On the
other hand, though, returning to our overarching theme of compassion, if we do
find ourselves in the position of confidante of a stranger, it may not be our
place to say, “Um, excuse me. I don’t need to know this, and it’s not helping
you to talk to me about it.” Because maybe it is actually helping them. I’m
sure there are those who simply confide in everybody, even though they do have
supportive friends and family to talk to. But how many strangers open up to us
in the hopes that we will be the one person to speak kindly to them today? Anton
Chekhov’s short story, “Misery” addresses this question.[vii]
In this story, a sledge driver tries to share with others his grief at the recent
death of his son, but none of the very few people he sees during the day
listen. None of the people he drives in his sledge care. Nobody responds
seriously or with compassion. They are all too preoccupied with their own
affairs to give a second thought to the man driving them. At the end of the
day, this desperate man begins speaking to his horse. In classic Chekhov style
of surprising the reader, the story ends with the horse displaying more
compassion than any of the human beings as she patiently listens to her master.
He is finally able to share his whole story and his feelings about it. So,
while I’m not a proponent of unnecessarily opening up to people, I feel like it’s
important to respect the confidences and disclosures that anybody shares with us,
be they friend or stranger. Each human interaction ought to be one of
compassion. Because we simply do not know exactly where people are coming from.
Now you might be saying, “Well, compassion is all well and
good. But at the end of the day, none of my kind words are going to bring my
friend’s daughter back to life. Listening to my friend won’t heal his anxiety.”
And you’re right. No matter how much we love each other and display compassion,
suffering is going to remain an integral part of our human experience. Nothing we
ever say or do can take away the pain and heartache that is an essential part
of life. Granted, there are a lot of situations where we can help others take
steps to improving their situation. I mean, if someone is down because they are
out of a job, we can definitely point them in the direction of a kind employer
we know, or put in a good word at a place that’s hiring. But often, there are
not simple solutions to the ongoing battles we face in life. Much of the time,
there isn’t anything we can do except smile at a stranger, hug a friend, cry
with a brother, listen to a coworker. We can’t fix their problems or take away
their pain.
But—and for me, this is one of the most beautiful, painful
aspects of compassion—we aren’t supposed to
fix everything by our love. We aren’t expected to make things ‘better,’ as much
as we wish we could sometimes. Suffering is an integral part of this life, and
I’m convinced that the removal of suffering would result in the cessation of
life itself. I am a firm believer in the redemptive potential of suffering. (Yeah,
Dostoevsky and I are pals. Christian doctrine, too.) So when we sit with our
arms around a friend trying to make her feel better, we’re not taking away her pain. We’re feeling it with her. We’re suffering
with her. And by that very act of feeling her pain, we strengthen her. Nothing
changed in her situation—she still has to battle cancer—but now she knows she
is not alone. She is connected. She is loved. She is understood. Dr. Brene Brown
affirms this concept in the abovementioned video, stating, “The truth is,
rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”
And we need that connection. We as human beings desperately need each other. We
can’t do this alone.
In the poignant words of yet another song, “Maybe you and I
were never meant to be complete. Could we just be broken together?”[viii]
And that’s what I think it all comes down to. We as humans have our challenges,
our battles, our fears, and our brokenness. And no matter how old we get, those
things are going to be part of life. But God gave us each other for support,
for solidarity, for love. For compassion. Ours is the glorious task of learning
compassion as we spend time on this earth, broken together. And I am grateful
for the knowledge that Christ is the ultimate example of compassion. He
literally felt everything that you and I have ever experienced, thus suffering
with us in a completely real sense. It is His compassion that ultimately brings
healing and grace to our mortal brokenness. And it is through His compassion
that we are capable of learning to have “compassion one of another.”[ix]
And that compassion—both Christ’s and man’s through Christ—is what will enable
us to successfully fight the battles of this life.
[i] A
popular quote widely attributed to either Plato or Philo. Wikipedia purports
Ian Maclaren as the likely source of this statement. Either way, though, I’m a
fan of its sentiment.
[ii] "Brene Brown on Empathy" An excellent (and cute) little video.
[iii] “Empathy—TheHuman Connection” This is a beautiful reminder that we don’t know what everyone
is going through, but we need to be compassionate.
Nice little Christian rock music video with the same message.
Nice little Christian rock music video with the same message.
[iv] Guy Winch, “Why we all need to practice emotional first aid.” Nov. 2014.
[v] Jon McLaughlin, “WeAll Need Saving”
[vii] Anton Chekhov, “Misery.” Here’s an English translation if you’re interested in reading
the whole thing.
[viii] Casting Crowns, “Broken Together.” While this song is specifically discussing a struggling
marriage, I think the concept of being ‘broken together’ is beautiful and
applicable to every human relationship. We can’t be perfect or solve everybody’s
problems, but we can be there for each other.
[ix] 1Peter 3:8
Comments
Post a Comment