Are You Compassionate?

“Most people trust that the compassion they feel for others will be acted upon by someone else, while they sit at home congratulating themselves for having felt it.”

Compassion.

We often think very highly of ourselves for feeling it. We see someone suffering. We feel bad. We shake our heads. Maybe we say something about how terrible it is. Maybe we tell someone else how terrible it is. And, having properly registered our concern, we go about our day.

Compassion accomplished. Right? I mean, if we’ve made a show of it, isn’t that as good as doing something? Except, of course, nothing has actually happened. The hungry person is still hungry. The lonely person is still lonely. The family facing eviction is still facing eviction. The old man still needs a ride to the doctor. But, hey, we cared. Or pretended to. And caring feels kind of like doing.

But it isn’t. 

“A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”

It looks like you’re growing food. But you’re not.

And this is one of the more frustrating illusions of modern life. We’ve managed to separate compassion from action. As if feeling something somehow eliminates the obligation to do something. We feel it. Surely someone else will act. There are charities for that. Government programs. Churches. Social workers. Nonprofits.

Surely somebody is handling it.

And so we outsource the obligation. We feel good about having “cared”. But THEY can do the work.

What a convenient arrangement. We get to experience ourselves as compassionate people without suffering many of the inconveniences traditionally associated with compassion. No interrupted afternoon. No uncomfortable conversation. No money spent. No stranger in the passenger seat. No problem suddenly becoming, inconveniently… our problem.

Just a show of concern. Pure and uncomplicated.

But real compassion never ends with the feeling. The feeling is only the beginning. Real compassion takes action. It gets up. It crosses the street. It makes the phone call. Gives the ride. Buys the groceries. Sits beside the bed. Finds the resource. Opens the wallet. Opens the door.

Sometimes it does something very small… but it does something.

The real measure of compassion has never been how deeply we feel the suffering of another person; it’s always been how much inconvenience we’re willing to endure because we felt it.

Because if compassion never manages to make it out of the living room…

It doesn’t deserve the name.