Parenting for Character: Teaching Justice and Compassion (5)

Compassion and Empathy
Compassion is spontaneous. It is a visceral human reaction to the needs of others. Unless adulterated by ignorance or greed or selfishness, it is a common human characteristic. Even the worst person alive will have a spontaneous call to compassion given certain human circumstances. He might not act upon this natural compulsion, but spontaneous compassion can and will arise in any human heart.

But my purpose in these blogs is to suggest how virtue becomes habitual, a way of life, a personal characteristic that marks beautiful character, and is an essential fabric of how we live as adults, and as a purposeful thread in our children’s education.

While the virtue of compassion can be very spontaneous, if it is to become a habit of life, we should recognize its source – empathy. In empathy, we struggle to participate in and understand another’s situation. We attempt to understand another’s “story.” We try to find out who they are and what factors have shaped their life. In so doing, we can determine how might we best relate to them. Empathy emerges in our hearts when we take the time and effort to understand another person’s narrative. In this understanding, we catch glimpses of why a person does what he does and speaks as he speaks. As we nurture empathy, as we deepen our understanding, we find the wisdom and strength to practice genuine compassion.

Unfortunately, if we do not make the effort to know another’s story, if we do not learn at least some of the factors in their life that made them who they are, we will superimpose our uninformed, uneducated, prejudicial conclusions. Our behaviors toward others will be driven by ignorance. At best they will be void of compassion; at worst they will be hurtful and cruel.

Also, if we do not practice empathy we will have no way to help others. If we don’t have some idea of why people speak and act as they do, our uninformed concepts stop us from being kind or considerate. And certainly we cannot be very helpful. We do not know a person’s real situation. In our ignorance we will offer “advice,” we will express our opinions, we will make judgments, and sometimes, even without realizing it we will even treat others cruelly out of our own ignorance.

The virtue of compassion does not come cheaply. I acknowledge that some people are naturally inclined to be more compassionate than others. By their nature, they are kind and gentle. They are quick to offer a friendly word and greet others with a warm demeanor. They are pleasant and agreeable.

From my own perspective, I like to be around pleasant people. But this kind of natural compassion seldom endures and it does not go very deep. It comes and goes like a warm breeze. Its value, temporary and fleeting. It does not have the capacity for meaningful action, for constructive sympathy, for moral and emotional support.

To become a compassionate person, we pay the price to listen, to understand, to embrace another’s real situation – to the best of our ability. Within this process, maybe we come to understand others more accurately. Maybe we learn how to adjust our own actions to better relate to them. Maybe we even discover some wisdom that enables us to offer meaningful advice or provide a way to help. Or maybe we find we can do nothing. We can only acknowledge and embrace this individual as a person who deserves our compassion, and the best action we can take is be a friend. In any case, because we have taken the time to understand, we will have the power to exercise real compassion.

From the 2018 March Birchwood School of Hawken Clipboard