Compassion

Quality of the month for December

Dictionary definitions of compassion generally agree on a single clear focus of meaning for this quality. Typical are these words: "deep feeling for and understanding of misery or suffering and the concomitant desire to promote its alleviation."

The PCC Resources Work Team added this:

"The people marked by compassion consistently seek the well-being of others, especially when misfortune and suffering are evident."

Two PCC members explained their understanding of what it means to be a compassionate person. Said one:

"It means attempting to put myself in another's shoes, then to act toward that person in a way that I would want to be treated if I were in their shoes."

Said another:

"To be a compassionate person, I must put the welfare of others before myself."

Here is how one Worthington high school student explained her own commitment to being a compassionate person:

"I believe the most important thing in this world is compassion and acting upon my beliefs and concerns. I know I can't find a cure for AIDS or end starvation and homelessness, but I have found a way to contribute my help to these problems. By hosting at the Hope for the Future '99, volunteering my time at the Homeless Families Foundation and participating in other community service activities, I have aided in raising money for these and other causes. Also, by visiting retirement homes and cheering up the residents, I have made their lives a little brighter . . . . Helping others gives me a sense of accomplishment and pride; however, I still feel I haven't done enough and I will continue to help others as long as I can."

The subject of compassion has received eloquent affirmation over the years. Here are a few samples:

	Emily Dickinson:		"If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain."
	John Wooden:		"Every day, try to help someone who can't reciprocate your kindness."
	Martin Luther King, Jr.:		"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard or superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs re-structuring."
	Mother Theresa:		"I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. Just one, one, one....So you begin – I begin. I picked up one person – maybe if I didn't pick up that one person I wouldn't have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you. . . . Just begin, one, one, one."
	Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:		"The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire."

What does it mean for you to be a compassionate person? What does it mean for your family to be a compassionate family? For your institution to be a compassionate institution? For this community to be a compassionate one?