"COMPASSION"

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This chapter is going to deal with compassion. Some of the emotions that we feel are what I call trigger emotions. They are not felt by themselves, but lie dormant waiting for a trigger to set off the emotion. For instance; compassion is such an emotion. You may not even realize it is present until a situation or circumstance triggers it into existence.

Everyone has compassion, the difference is the trigger. Some people are affected by the homeless, but only if they see them, rather than hearing about it on the news. Other people are affected just knowing there are people going hungry and without the basic needs of life that most of us take for granted. Those that are on the borderline of society whether through mental illness or severe trauma in their lives, or maybe just a debt that they have to pay to karma, also have compassion; but their trigger mechanism may be much different from the mainstream. I'm sure we have all heard it told how the most hardened criminal and depraved fiend still may have a deep compassion for animals or maybe small children.

Compassion is an inherent human quality that we are all born with. The point is that compassion exists in everyone to some degree or another, with the underlying difference being the trigger mechanism that we each develop through our lives.

Let's talk for a moment about the triggers that we use. Usually the things that we feel most strongly in our lives are the common triggers. For instance if you have lied a lot in your life and been caught many times you might feel compassion for someone who was caught lieing. However, having dealt with people in this situation I have found more times than not that those who lie the most are the most intolerant about being lied too, but they are also the ones lied to the most (there is a lesson somewhere in there).

You might feel these emotions even while watching a movie or television. We all want people to succeed and when they don't we feel their sense of disappointment (even if we know that it is not a real life situation) and this is called empathy.

Compassion is not necessarily asked for or deserved. It is something that we feel inside; sometimes spilling over to the outside, but most of the time stays as a bottled up emotion expressed by tears or felt like a lump caught in your throat. The trigger can come at anytime being caused from talking to a friend in need, movies or television, to seeing a news report, or anything in between. Sometimes compassion is caused by the vulnerability of the situation; in other words a catastrophe that could have happened to anyone, not just one class or sect of people.

This is a good place to note that there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy occurs when you see someone in a difficult or painful situation that you yourself have been in previously and you feel compassion for their situation; this could be anything from death, divorce, illness or just a difficult relationship, to anything in-between. Sympathy is something felt without necessarily ever having been in that situation yourself. For instance when you see people who have gone through some natural disaster and you feel compassion, but you yourself have never been through a natural disaster. Both are outpourings of compassion; but the reasoning behind each is different. You will find that intent is more important than the actual feeling and should always be investigated.

One form of compassion is forgiveness. It is easy to forgive someone for something that we ourselves have done when they apologize because we can relate to the mistake. It is much harder to have compassion for someone who has made a mistake that we find personally reprehensive; such as a child molester or wife abuser. Even if this person admits their mistake and tries to make amends it is much harder to accept their apology and feel compassion toward them.

Forgiveness and compassion, however, appear to go hand in hand. It is inevitably this feeling of compassion that leads to forgiveness. Let's talk about this for a moment by talking about our parents. This is a good subject to go to since we all had a childhood and unfortunately most of us blame most of our problems in later life on that childhood. It's okay because that is what society has accepted. The leading pioneering psychiatrists have all agreed that most problems stem from unresolved issues during childhood, which, of course, stems back to our parents.

Parents make mistakes, I know that mine certainly were not the perfect "Leave it to Beaver Family", but then listening to some of these "movie mothers" who portrayed these perfect mothers with perfect families, neither were theirs'. I don't know of anyone who had a perfect childhood, however, I do know of a lot of bitter adults who blame all of their problems on their parents and their childhood and while they are so busy laying blame the same issues continue to go unresolved.

There are a lot of these same adults who have built up anger and resentment towards their parents and are unable to forgive them for their imperfect childhood. I bring this up now because where better to practice compassion than on those we love. Let's take ourselves out of the picture for the moment and look at our parents. What kind of people are they without children? I am willing to bet that the problems you encountered with them growing up had very little to do with you as a person and more to do with them as people. If you can look at them today in a new perspective out of compassion then you have a chance to heal old wounds, forgive them (whether they ask for it or not because it is much more important for you than for them) and move on with your life.

Planned compassion is very rare, spontaneous compassion is much more the norm. Below is an example of compassion. I make no judgement calls only present the facts and remember I did not ever say that compassion had to be earned.

EXAMPLE I:

Right now a very famous movie and sport star is on trial for killing his wife and her friend. The overwhelming amount of evidence shows him to be guilty, including DNA samples, hair and blood samples, yet the majority of the American public wants him to go free. This is a strange form of compassion; coming from not wanting to accept that someone who was put on a public pedestal and used as a role model for many years could be guilty of such a heinous crime. I think that the reasoning behind this might be partially that if someone with relatively everything in life could do something like this, then any one of us is capable of it also and the concept of this is more frightening then the crime itself.

Once again I am not passing judgement on him one way or another, as it is not my place to do so. However, this is another good example of compassion.

As I work on this chapter we have just had a terrible catastrophe, a bombing of a building in Oklahoma City. The outpouring of love and compassion toward the survivors and their families is amazing. Once again we have hit on vulnerability for this. We have all been in a federal building at one time or another and the feeling that this could have been us is staggering. There is more than one trigger here though. These victims were all innocent and quite a few were small children. In the above example there is a chance of guilt, but these people were only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Are you starting to get a feeling for compassion. It is one of the most positive emotions that link us together and other than love I believe one of the strongest. In fact it might be stronger than love as far as humanity goes because it is hard to love people you don't know (at least the concept for most is hard), but it is easy to feel compassion for those you have never met.

As in all things, however, sometimes we forget that compassion starts at home, so to speak. We tend to have a lot more compassion for others than we do for ourselves. We tend to put the strongest demands on ourselves and then be unforgiving when we find that we can't live up to those expectations. Remember the people you are feeling compassion for in national disasters are people you don't know. It is much easier to feel compassion for nameless faces, having no idea of their life circumstances than it is for yourself. However, we truly cannot show compassion for others unless we give some to ourselves too. I have spoken with so many people who just refuse to give themselves a break. They blame themselves for everything that has ever gone wrong in their life and the lives of those they love, whether they were to blame or not and refuse to show compassion or understanding for their flaws or errors. Give yourself the same break you give to others. For with you it counts so much more.

The compassion that we feel for natural disasters and the homeless is an inherent compassion that is ingrained in us before birth so that we will all take care of each other. The only problem with this type of compassion is that it is short lived. As long as the circumstances are put before the people and seen, people respond and give of themselves and their resources. Once the problem stays around awhile it is less consuming and tends to be ignored. The homeless are a perfect example of this as are the senior citizens that are put away in nursing homes and then forgotten (almost as if it is a crime to be old, even though all of us will either become old or die first).

There are many who deserve our compassion and whenever I have someone talk to me that is contemplating suicide because their lives aren't going exactly as they would like, I tell them to visit the nursing homes, children's hospital wards (where innocent children are dying of cancer and aids and yet hanging onto every breath of life, though it be in pain) and walk among the homeless. These people all have a will to survive and each of them have compassion for those they feel are less fortunate then they. Our emotions are amazing.

Unfortunately the one draw back to compassion seems to be out of sight, out of mind. If it hasn't got our attention and kept it, we don't feel it, unless we are reminded some other way.

Another drawback to compassion comes because of our vulnerability to being manipulated when feeling others pain and yet feeling helpless to do anything about it. There are always going to be those who are ready and willing to tell you how to help and give you addresses that you can send your money to. If we are not careful we can be cheated and manipulated by this feeling. The advertisers have already honed in on this and I am sure that we all have seen the commercials with starving misshapen children with flies all over their faces. They tell you that for a few cents per day you can feed this child's whole family and send them to school (I wish I knew where they shopped). What they don't tell you is that approximately 1 cent on the dollar goes to this cause and the rest into Adminstrative Costs, not to mention their advertising. It is sad that some people are unscrupulous enough to get rich off of someone elses sorrow, but it is happening all the time.

I do not say that all of these organizations are like this. However, before you give your money do some investigating. There are many charitable organizations who are only helping those who organized it. There are also many legitimate organizations that do a lot of good. Your responsibility doesn't lie in writing the check, but checking out where the money is going to make sure it does the good that you intended it to do.

My grandmother was a woman of great compassion. She believed in tithing 10% of her income. She did not necessarily give the money to the church, however. If she saw kids running around with no shoes she would investigate. If she found that their parents didn't have the money to buy shoes, she would find out the sizes of the kids (usually through her own grandkids investigating) and buy shoes for every child in the family. She would use her "tithing" money for this. If she knew that a family was having a hard time putting food on the table before the end of the month she would go out and buy groceries and leave them on the doorstep and then ring the bell and leave. She didn't want a thank you she only wanted to do her part.

My grandmother never believed in just writing a check and letting someone else do the deed (but then my grandmother never believed in banks and did not have a checking account till the day she died and buried her money in the basement in jars). She showed much compassion in her life, but few people ever knew about it. I knew because I was young and could execute her plans, such as leaving the groceries, ringing the doorbell and running before they saw me.

Her compassion did not just run for people, as I can remember feeling like we picked up every stray starving animal she could find, fed it and then took it to the animal shelter. Many weekends of my life growing up were doing this as I always had a way with animals and was unafraid of them (I never got bit by one stray which in and of itself is a miracle).

I know from doing the deeds myself that there is no greater satisfaction than actually doing it yourself, rather than writing a check to an organization where it may or may not go for what you intended. Some people prefer to do this because it is easier and less time consuming, and some just do not want to see how much pain and suffering goes on all around them. It doesn't have to take that much time and the opportunities are all around you. When you are driving to and from work there are usually people on the medians with signs stating that they are willing to exchange work for food. I will not hand these people money, but if I have food I will give them something to eat. If they are really hungry they are happy for this and if they aren't, well they are probably making a living out of the age old art of panhandling.

There is a difference between giving with a free heart and giving out of guilt or other ulterior motives. As far as karma goes what you give you will receive back ten-fold, if you give freely. However, very few people give freely and without motive or reason. Some people give so that they will receive. Some give out of guilt, sometimes due to pressure from peers or family or even places of business. Some give for recognition. Some people give so that they will feel good about themselves. When was the last time you gave freely just because there was a need with absolutely no ulterior motive or hidden agenda behind it? Be honest, not with me but with yourself.

Some people have never given freely in their lives. Even a small child will give something and then return within a few minutes to retrieve it. There are very few children who give and walk away never to ask for the object again. If even innocent children have this problem, how much more do adults?

As hard as it may seem to give material things, it is much harder to give of ourselves. This is one of the reasons that compassion is a short lived feeling. We feel the compassion at the time of the incident, if we felt it strong enough we send a check or donate goods, but few actually drop what they are doing in their busy lives and run physically over to help. Most of the ones that do help have something more at stake; maybe they are already a firefighter and this is their job, or they have loved ones involved or friends....the reasons are numerous.

As a sidelight that is how these help groups get started. People don't usually just decide to open an Aid's group unless it directly affects their life, i.e. they have a friend or loved one that has contracted or died of the disease. The same goes for all the other support groups. If you doubt this check it out. People join these things out of a need to bond with other people that have the same problem, it has very little to do with compassion and most of the time when people give to these charitable organizations it is also due to an affiliation of some sort. I am not saying that this is good or bad, only that intent needs to be acknowledged and understood.

Compassion unless freely given without prejudice or ulterior motive does not teach us or help us to grow. Compassion is the outreach to another human being that we feel sympathy or empathy for with the ultimate goal to fulfill their need and somehow make their quality of life better for having given. Compassion is not meant as a balm to ease a guilty conscience, assure us a reward (whether physical or spiritual), or bring recognition to ourselves. Compassion is the act of seeing a need and meeting it to the best of each of our abilities. Imagine the Utopia we would all be living in if each and every one of us lived our lives this way. The concept alone is staggering.

Recently I posted a letter to a group dealing with kindness and compassion and I am going to enclose that letter in this chapter because I think it best defines my feelings and thoughts on compassion. It is in regard to the trajedy in Oklahoma. This particular list that I subscribe to on the internet was filled with letters concerning this tragic incident and what I was seeing was a trend toward anger and revenge, some even thinking the death penalty would be too good for the perpetrators of this crime. Without further adieu here is the letter;

Dear Friends:

I was just reading through all the mail about Oklahoma and even though any senseless act brings pain to many, do you ever wonder why it takes something out of the ordinary to bring a public outcry? Here in the United States many are dying slow deaths from starvation, disease caused from contaminated food and water, children being bit by rats and yet where are their voices? Do we hear those voices every day as we hear the news talking about O.J. whether we want to hear it or not?

Think about it a minute this is in the news and it is a hot story because it is different, but what if it became a regular occurrence like it has been in South Africa, Ireland, Lebanon, Afghanistan and the list goes on. Would our voices still raise and our tears flow or would we become hardened to the suffering of others?

There is no easy pain or suffering. My heart goes out to the survivers and the families of those who did not survive and to them I send energy and peace. The ones who have died do not need our sympathy for they are being taken care of and will move on.

Once again each of us can make a difference by issuing out a cup of kindness to all we come in contact with. It starts in each of our hearts and works down like a trickle down effect.

Be kind to each other and be especially kind to a stranger. Be kind for kindness sake, where there is no seeable reward. Know, however, that for each one you are kind to you have planted the seed of kindness. It may not grow before your eyes and it may take years to grow, but it will grow. Go out of your way to do an act of kindness, not one day or one week out of the year, but everyday of your life. If you start looking you will find the opportunity presents itself at every turn, just waiting for us to act.

Each of us can make a difference, but until we are ready to do something about it, rather than feeling like a victim, fear will grow as a weed that is deep rooted and keeps coming back no matter how many times you pull it from your garden. The only way to finally kill a weed is to plant a strong plant which will choke it out of existence. When you have planted enough kindness there will be no room for the fear weed and it will be destroyed, not with violence, but by refusing to feed it.

Peace,

Lorri O:)

As you can gather from this letter kindness stems from compassion and should be its own reward. After writing this letter I got one from someone who was in charge of a folder on "random acts of kindness" and they wanted me to submit acts of kindness that I had done or that I knew of others' doing. I replied kindly but firmly that I would not list my acts of kindness because it went against what I believed. Instead of talking about compassion and kindness one must just do it as a way of life, rather than making it into some sort of heroic jesture and I believe until we do this things won't get better physically for all. I also believe that if people sit around and read about what others do it can affect what they do and not necessarily in a positive manner. We tend to disassociate with humanity when we read about things like someone running into a burning building and rescuing someone. Our first thoughts are, well I would do that too if I saw a burning building. Let's face it how many burning buildings have we walked by at the right time?

To me this deflects from people finding these acts for themselves. It also somehow lessens the simple day to day acts that we each are capable of. I would rather that no one know my acts of kindness but myself, that way I am sure that my intent is pure and not ego oriented. I mention my grandmother's acts because she is dead and unaffected one way or another by what others think of her at this point. I guarantee you though that she told no one of her acts and did them in total anonymity. It upset her if people found out and she would bluster and change the subject trying to diminish their interest and fauning remarks. I will repeat this quote because it is one I totally believe in and I think it best describes her feelings "the reward for doing right is right". If each of us did this every day as a way of life rather than a random act there would be no violence left in this world, it would be choked out of existence.

Some people still do not understand what the feeling of compassion is and don't know if they have truly felt it. For you I give the best example I can think of and that is Christmas. The Christmas Spirit is a spirit of compassion, kindness and love all rolled up into one. It is a time of year when we are all brought to paying attention to others rather than ourselves. Christmas is a time we put others first.

I really think that a lot of this is done through advertisement and once again because it is put in front of the public eye day in and day out for about two months people acknowledge it and react to it. The minute the ads stop in most so does the spirit. During this time the charities do the biggest business they have all year. You find them at every store ringing bells and begging for money and people are all giving. People rally together and get together food bundles and presents and present them to the needy so they can have a better Christmas. This is wonderful, except what about the other 364 days of the year?

It almost seems as though compassion is a water spout that has been turned on for one day out of 365 and then it is turned off and we are each back within our own little cubicle letting the rest of humanity pass us by because we have our own set of problems, which now include paying for Christmas.

It is almost like we have seen the deep cut of humanity and put antiseptic and a clean bandage on it, but what happens when tomorrow that bandage becomes dirty and falls off and there is not another clean bandage to put on it? Now the cut is open and susceptible to infection and bacteria and all the bandage did was hold off the inevitable. Is it better to show someone a better way, then take it away from them, or is it better that they never knew that there was a way to end their pain and suffering to begin with? This is a hard call and once again I would have to refer back to the fish analogy. If you feed a man a fish dinner you have fed him one meal, but if you teach him how to fish you have taught him how to feed himself.

While we are talking about giving let's talk a little about Christmas and what it means to each of us. We go through the stores searching for the perfect gift, wondering if the person we are buying for is going to like what we pick, rarely giving the person what we think they need because we have been taught that Christmas is supposed to be a time when you buy something for someone that they wouldn't normally buy for themselves. While you are going through all this stress in the back of your mind is the amount you can spend on each individual, not necessarily what you can afford to spend, but rather looking back on what they spent on you last Christmas (come on be honest we all do it and we wouldn't be human if we didn't). You realize that you will have to spend at least that much, if not more due to the cost of inflation.

Now after fighting traffic and grumpy people waiting on you, and after being pushed and shoved you have found the perfect gift, purchased it and gone home with it. Of course, two weeks later you find the same thing on sale at another store, but you have yours and even though it will take you the rest of the year to pay for it you feel content in the realization that the person is going to be ecstatic and love this gift.

You now send the gift to your friend or loved one and hear nothing. There is no thank you, no phone call, no acknowledgement that they even opened the gift. You know they received it because you called to make sure it arrived all right. You don't know whether they liked it or not, whether they exchanged it for something else or put it in a closet somewhere never to be seen again. Worse yet now you receive their gift which is either more or less expensive than yours (take a pick the feeling is about the same one way or the other). So now you either feel cheap or cheated. Is this truly giving? Do you feel good about this or are you like a growing number of people who hate the thought of Christmas coming around?

I know that this is extreme, but honestly how many of us haven't had this very scenario happen to us? I enjoy Christmas because I love giving. I don't, however, enjoy giving to people who already have everything imaginable and are truly happy with nothing. Giving to these people is done out of obligation rather than the joy of giving. Sometimes I think it would be better to send a card stating this is what I was going to spend on you and you were going to spend the same, so merry christmas let's save some time and money in shipping. I know that this sounds like a hum bug, but I really feel that Christmas has gotten way out of hand. Part of it could be that there is so much suffering going on around us that we want to overgive this one time of the year to alleviate it. However, giving over expensive gifts that we truly can't afford to people who truly don't need or appreciate it is not the way to accomplish that or feel better about ourselves.

Did you know that the holidays are the biggest time of the year of suicides. People feel unloved if they are not with family and friends and become very depressed. I don't think that this is the way the spirit of christmas is supposed to effect us, and I feel that the advertisiers who project the perfect family around the perfect tree having the perfect dinner and receiving the perfect present has a lot to do with it. I think we have bought into the image that the advertisers have given us and let's face it no one can measure up because reality is not perfect, but then again if it was what would we have to work toward.

Now there are some people who truly enjoy giving at Christmas and shopping and wish that it was 365 days a year. I had a friend like that. She would start shopping on the day after Christmas and continue until the following Christmas. She would hide presents all over the house, picking up sales and she always had gifts for everyone. No one ever left her house empty handed no matter how unexpected they were. She took great delight in buying, wrapping and then storing gifts in her closet and all over the house for the next year. This is an extreme case and it became an obsession with her to the point of almost ending a 20 year marriage because of the enormous amount of money she would spend all year round, sometimes no even having enough money to put sufficient food on the table for her family.

Since I have become an adult and look at Christmas through those eyes I have not found anyone that truly enjoys what Christmas has become. Even the children are not easily pleased or really happy with what they receive, because by the time they get it something else is out that is newer and better and they throw down what they have to grab at what they now want.

There is a point to all of this and I hope you have caught it by now. My friend, for instance, thought that all she had to offer others were material gifts so used this as her form of giving. This is very sad because you only truly give when you give of yourself. Channeling your whole life around Christmas shuts you off from experiencing so much more about giving and loses the true meaning behind the act. There is no growth in centering your life around a feeling, even if that feeling brings you or others great joy because there must be a balance of all things for true peace to be attained.

It is along these same lines of thinking that you are reading this book right now without having to pay a penny for it. There is a price for everything, but it is not always material. Giving someone something material is fleeting and temporary and usually not what is really needed. This book will go on giving, not because of the pages or the time or money spent in preparing it, but because the thoughts can help someone see things through a different perspective and perhaps open a door to them that otherwise would have remained closed. By opening that door they have the responsibility to pass their knowledge and understanding along to someone else, and they to someone else and before you know it we are all sharing and giving and feeling interconnected.

Not all disasters can be handled with money and most of the time money is not what is needed the most. Take the recent catastrophe in Oklahoma. What did those people need money for? Most of them only lost a purse or a coat. They still had a roof over their heads and were taken care of as far as their jobs with the government go. They still had a home to go to and most of them still had vehicles to take them there. They had food to eat and free burial for their loved ones was being offered. Have you ever wondered what all that money that the charitable organizations received for this disaster would be used for?

Think about it a minute. Even the food that was being fed the volunteers was being donated by local restaurants. President Clinton ordered Oklahoma a disaster area and loans were immediately made available at 3% interest, to which people were lining up for. What special financial burden did these people truly undergo?

I may be out of line here and this is only my opinion, however, I believe that what these people needed had very little to do with money. They needed support, hope, comfort and the understanding that we the American people cared about their plight and were praying, meditating or whatever form of channeling energy you might do for them. I don't think a check is going to convey that.

I looked up the word compassion in Webster's Dictionary and it had a one word definition; "sympathy". That seemed too simplistic so I looked up the word sympathy and it said "understanding and compassion".

I think understanding and compassion should go hand in hand. I believe that this means looking at the situation and addressing it and finding what is needed and then providing it. If you felt that you had nothing to give in the way of emotional support to this cause, that is fine, but if it got to you and made you think about giving, why not turn this into something positive and look closer to home where you can give of yourself. There is no greater feeling in the world than giving of yourself.

You might ask how you can do this? It is up to the individual, however, there are a few simple guidelines. Do not allow yourself to show more compassion for an animal then you would for a human being. This is an easy hole to fall into. Animals expect nothing out of us and won't walk away. People who show more compassion for an animal than a human are running away from people. They have usually been hurt and don't want to run the risk of being hurt again. There is no chance for rejection and you feel more secure in your position. There is a lesson to be learned through this and growing will be halted until it is learned.

Let's look at what we get from pets as opposed to relationships. It is easy to love an animal and easy to have compassion for an animal because you feel needed and are shown gratitude. You are looked up to, not talked back to or talked down to, there is no chance for rejection (that word again) and nothing is demanded from you. They accept whatever you have to give them without complaint, accepting as much as you want to give them, when you want to give it, and are always there waiting for you when you need them. They will listen to anything you have to say without correcting you or arguing and will never try to make you feel foolish. They will never challenge your intelligence and never appear to be smarter than you, in fact if they do show any signs of intelligence you can take credit for having taught them well. They will not make you feel guilty for being in a bad mood and wanting to be alone, but wait patiently until you approach them.

These are just a few of the reasons that feelings run so deep for animals. It is really not because they are poor helpless creatures, because in reality we have made them what they are, and they were getting along quite well in the wild before man was.

I am not saying that we shouldn't have pets. I think that they are a very important part of life overall. However, if we start treating them as we would a human being and giving them the same considerations, in fact putting them first, start to look deeper and you will find lessons that haven't been learned. All things should be kept in perspective in order for peace and balance to ensue.

If you feel that animals would not have survived without mankind, think again. Man is the one who has made so many species extinct.

No one said that you shouldn't love your animals, but it is a different love than the love for humanity. I have three dogs in my household and they are loved by the whole family. Loving animals more than people should raise a red flag for a lesson not learned.

Sometimes I think that movies and television are part of what has made us calloused. In the beginning when there was no live entertainment when man saw another man in trouble he felt compassion and immediately set about helping. Today we see things at the movies and on television that elicit these same feelings, but there is no one there to help and we know that it is fiction so go about our lives without having to feel guilty about not helping because there was really nothing we could have done. The news on television is just an extension of the movies and dramas. We tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do about that either, even though we certainly feel sympathy for their plight. Some will even sit down and write a check and send it to the address on the screen, feeling better about doing their part.

Life, however, plays a much crueler movie where there is no on/off switch or remote control. We see street people, people who fill our mental institutions and then are let back out on the streets not cured but no harm to us or themselves (supposedly), people in prisons (who all eventually get out), victims of violent crimes, victims of disabilities, abused children (and from all the adults I have counselled I would say that that makes up about 99%), anomalities, blindness, deafness, hunger, terminal diseases affecting both young and old; all of this surrounds us everyday, is it any wonder that we turn our minds off to it? With this much overwhelming suffering we would lose our sanity if we concentrated on all of it. The news and newspapers are full, but we have learned to harden ourselves to these feelings. It isn't until one story is really played up to its fullest that we take notice. For every article that appears there are thousands that don't appear.

So you are now saying to yourself, this is all well and good, but what can I do to make a difference? I don't have time, energy or financial ability. First of all lose the excuses and realize that everyone has a part to play and if we each play our part it will not be a burden on any one person. You run across people everyday in your life that need compassion and help.

When you perform an act of compassion let it be freely given with no ulterior motive. If you are doing it for reward or recognition it is no longer an act of compassion, but a paid service. If I told you to go tomorrow to your local rescue mission and literally volunteer your time to help feed the hungry, this would not be an act of compassion. This would be something you were doing because you were guilted into it and told that it was the right thing to do. You would feel put on the spot and obligated to do this, rather than freely giving of yourself. The acts of compassion that each of us must do are the ones that we find for ourselves. Sometimes there is as much joy in finding the act as there is in doing it.

I will not tell you what to do or how to do it. However, I can give you a few examples of acts of compassion. These are not put before you to be judged on merit, just to help you along by showing you what surrounds us all the time.

When I was young and first married we lived in a house by the railroad track. One day as I was taking laundry to the back wash house an older man who was dirty and tattered stopped me on my way to the backyard and asked me if I had some food to spare. He had just gotten off the train and hadn't eaten for a few days. I told him to wait right there and went in the house and packed him a lunch and brought it out to him. Well, I didn't know it at the time but he marked our house with a piece of chalk and it wasn't long before a few times a week different people were showing up at my door asking for food or money. I wouldn't ever give them money because I didn't want to support a drinking habit, however, I never turned anyone away for food. My husband got suspicious and looked around the house and found the chalk mark which was an X, but I wouldn't let him erase it, because as long as I lived in that house the people who rode that train did have a place to come to get a meal. I was never harmed or robbed and didn't fear these men and they were very respectful.

There are people all around that just need a little kindness and sometimes that can make a remarkable difference in their life, just to know that someone cares enough to help them.

I don't think that there is any feeling in the world like the one you get after committing an act of compassion. The biggest reward is really your own and the growth from the experience is amazing.

Acts of compassion come in many sizes, forms and amounts of committment. It could be anything from knowing that a neighbor or coworker is sick and not well enough to fix meals, pitching in and supplying that need, running to the market, pharmacy, taking them to the doctor, etc. It could be as simple as seeing someone stranded on the roadway in the middle of the night or day and stopping to help. It could even be helping an older person take their groceries to the car or picking something up that they dropped. You will find it all around you if you only take the blinders off and start looking.

Sometimes it is a kind word for someone that looks as if they need it. Sometimes a shoulder to cry on. Giving of yourself is a lot more important than giving money, because most of the time what is needed cannot be purchased with a check. It is very sad that our society feels that money solves all problems, when, in fact, it causes more problems than it solves.

There is one word of caution here. Let your acts be in and out. Do not allow yourself to get sucked into someone elses life as their problem solver. There are people who are waiting to cling to a rescuer and not let go and you do them and yourself no favors by allowing this to happen. Do not become their crutch. There are a lot of people to help, don't limit yourself to just one or two. If people try to cling to you after your act of compassion it is because they need something more than you can give them, so detach yourself and move on. You have planted the seed and it may not take root right away, but it will grow even if you are not there to see it.

HOMEWORK;

The homework for this week is to do three acts of compassion. The first act will be for a relative. It doesn't matter whether it is getting something that you know they need, helping them in whatever way that they truly need help in without being asked.

The second act will be for a friend, neighbor or acquaintence. Someone that you know, but is not a family member and, therefore, you have no real obligation to.

The third act will be for a complete stranger. You must not know this person, never see them again, but do the act and disappear from their lives.

After you have done each act I want you to write in your journal all the feelings you are having. After you have done all three I want you to compare these feelings.

In the first it will be a family member, who will always be there. They will always remember you for your act of kindness and will probably tell other family members about it, so there will be a reward factor of immediate recognition and the satisfaction that you have made an impression on this person, which makes you feel good because they are dear to you and you love them. This is a very easy act to do with direct reward.

The second is a little more difficult, because it is for a person who may or may not spread your good deed to others that you know, saying how wonderful you are and they may or may not be as grateful as you think they should be. This will be a different feeling, because that is someone that you have been kind to without the attachement you would have to a relative. The deep love factor is not there.

The third act is the one I want you to pay the closest attention to, as it is one that will feel the most foreign and uncomfortable. Many of us have spent our lives doing acts of compassion for relatives and friends, however, few have done many for strangers. We have done indirect acts such as donating clothing, furniture, food or money to organizations that help people, but rarely been involved on a one-to-one basis. This act has no foreseeable reward. You don't know this person and they don't know you or any of your friends. They will not be able to tell your friends what a great person you are and you will never see them again so they won't be able to thank you over and over. You will simply do the act and then disappear.

The wonderful thing about this is the feeling you get once you have done the act and compassion has a definite domino effect. When you do something nice for someone, they will do something nice for someone else and there is no telling where it will end. It may even in some small way change the outlook they have on life and before you know it; wouldn't it be a wonderful world if everyone was being concerned about everyone else.

This is not something we are starting, but rather something we are going back to. Give this your best and I think you will be amazed at what a growth experience it can be you may even decide that you want to carry these exercises over and incorporate them into your everyday life; and now the seed is planted in you.