I was listening to my favourite radio station this morning and two researchers were being interviewed about their latest project. Compassion.
What a wonderful topic!
You see, we all tend to bandy about the word without thinking through what it means. Most often, people use the term interchangeably with ‘sympathy’. To be compassionate is to show someone sympathy.
But is that the true meaning of compassion?
I’ve thought about it a lot, particularly when I’ve heard people complaining about others’ lack of compassion.
So, when the researchers shared their definition, it really resonated with me.
They explained that compassion has two parts to it.
Part one is being emotionally sensitive to someone else’s suffering. It’s the emotion that one feels in response to the situation someone is in. And the emotion can be anything – from sadness for what the person is going through to anger and assertiveness in taking a stand on a particular view. And feeling sympathy fits quite nicely in this part, too.
But compassion doesn’t simply end there. There is a second part.
Part 2 is having the desire to alleviate that suffering – to see the person move through to the other side of suffering and to go on with their life with joy.
And that second part is what is often missing when most people talk about compassion. It’s the motivation to see the person shift out of their suffering.
Simply staying in a space of suffering alongside another person – on its own – is not exercising compassion. It may be holding and demonstrating sympathy or empathy, but without the desire to see the person shift out of their suffering, then all we see is two people who are now are wallowing in the same suffering.
The purpose of compassion is to see suffering end, along with acknowledging and responding to the immediate suffering that is being experienced.
We need both parts of the equation in order to hold genuine compassion for someone.
Leave out the emotional sensitivity to someone else’s suffering, and we can become a blunt instrument, pounding at someone to “get over it”. And leaving out the desire to help shift that person out of their suffering, well, we become an enabler to keeping them stuck in their suffering.
