Some Thoughts on Compassion
In which the author offers tea and cake to a distraught friend and considers the link between small and large-scale compassion.
Some of us in the Commons Art Group have gone along to a dance performance called ‘Plan B for Utopia’ (which subsequently featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival). One of those attending is a friend called Joanna. I suggest we might go for a cup of tea to talk about the Plan B performance, and she agrees.
I was very short of money in those days. However, I’m an old-fashioned kind of person and still feel it’s a gentleman’s prerogative to buy for a lady. Every woman is a descendant of the Queen of Sheba, I’ve since told Joanna on many occasions, and the Queen of Sheba doesn’t pay for her own chai and chowder. (I think I learnt this fact from pop legend, Sister Sledge.)
There is an anxious moment however, as Joanna considers having a salad. It costs more than I have in cash and I don’t know if any of my bank cards will work. Luckily, she settles instead for a slice of lemon drizzle cake along with her tea. I have enough for a cuppa myself, with only pennies left.
Joanna seems anxious and before long a story of recent troubles in her life starts to unfold. I glance nervously at the time as Joanna’s story continues. Eventually, I must apologise and step out of the café to phone my Dad and say that the evening meal will be delayed. This news is equivalent to telling him that he must lose an arm. I suggest that he visits the biscuit tin to tide him over until I return home.
Back in the café and Joanna is sobbing heavily. I find myself tongue-tied, so try simply to make encouraging grunts. Somehow, Joanna interprets this as reassurance. The trauma passes. Joanna’s face brightens. It seems like talking things through has been cathartic.
I reach home and dinner is delivered one hour and ten minutes late. Dad appears distraught. He had found the biscuit tin but been unable to open the lid. Soon though, he settles, and the normal routine of dinner and watching the news on TV is re-established. When I find time to myself I have a long think over the story Joanna has told me. What is most striking is that she seems to have no condemnation or judgement against the people who have wronged her. On the other hand, perhaps she is silently fuming and just not admitting it. Perhaps she secretly longs to smash something over the heads of her antagonists. Or perhaps, as the Queen of Sheba, she might wish to sell them into slavery, have them put into cages, slung over the back of a camel and carried off to some unknown fate.
Maybe, I think, it would be better if she was really angry – although best not with the smashing things or the selling into slavery. When it comes to situations like this, the feelings get complicated.
I send an email off to Joanna to check she has reached home safely. Then it’s tea and biscuits with Dad and off to bed.
That question – whether to forgive someone and let things go, or whether to take a stand and express our anger – is a dilemma we all face from time to time. Anger is a frightening emotion and sometimes we would prefer just to smooth things over rather than express the anger we are feeling. But then the anger can fester until it finds expression in some unsuitable ways, such as outbursts towards people who don’t deserve our wrath. And this can often be over matters not even connected with the original cause of the upset. Anger can also be the expression of something else – grief, fear, despair – so again the person who might be the target of an angry outburst might be the unsuspecting bit-player in a drama that is really about some deeper hurt within us.
All of this leads me to think that we need to be very slow in reacting to difficult circumstances. We are best to buy time, somehow, to think through how we really feel and then find a way to carefully explain where things stand with those involved.
The surprising thing in all this is how much the big scale of societies and nations relate to the small-scale world of our own families, friends and workplaces. Our nation, for instance, may stockpile weapons and give out very clear signals that any threats to our sovereignty will be met with severe reprisals. And our nation might do very little for the poor and vulnerable in our society. So a lack of compassion is the default response. Such big politics are usually beyond our control, but these policies, I think, filter down to the smaller concerns of our everyday lives. When the nation threatens its enemies and fails to care for its poor then us individual citizens pick up on this vibe and may replicate it in our personal lives.
Vulnerability is the key here. Do you see yourself as vulnerable? Perhaps not. Perhaps you’d rather not think that way and would regard vulnerability as a shameful thing. But then, vulnerability does not necessarily mean hopeless or helpless or inadequate. Children are vulnerable but they are often full of joy. It is often the vulnerability of other people that is the key to loving them.
Knowing our own vulnerability is a step towards having compassion for ourselves. The things that seem to make our lives happy (if indeed we are happy) can sometimes be things that we might easily lose – short-term pleasures and superficial happiness. Compassion for self asks instead about what will make our lives worthwhile in the long-term. What would it mean – towards the end of our lives – for us to say to ourselves that we have lived a good life?
And so too with other people. What are their lives about? What would be a good life for them? This is the kind of big picture that I think it’s helpful to consider when faced with some dilemma about what to do amongst family or friends. Can we build other people up? Can we multiply their gifts so they can feel fulfilled in their lives? These are, admittedly, big questions to be asking when our arguments with others are often over very trivial things. And there might be a temptation then to be digging too deep, trying to analyse other folk, and even offering them cures! But no. That’s not what I’m suggesting! To offer someone some kind of advice about their life is really an affront. It could easily be even more hurtful than just getting angry!
So the very subtle thing we might think about (and this is why we need to buy time) is to find the right words to build someone up without in any way suggesting how they might change their lives!
Could nations find similar responses? Two principles of government we might consider here are that government is for the protection of a nation’s citizens and government is for the flourishing of its citizens. ‘Protection’ does not have to mean threatening violence against any other nation who we might consider aggressors. In fact, such a stance may make the nation more rather than less vulnerable to attack, and would therefore be a failure of that duty of government to protect its citizens. Protection could instead be by way of shelters, food stocks, emergency power generation, civil defence, cyber defence and back-up means of keeping infrastructure functioning if there were a loss of computer systems.
But the bigger picture here is to consider that second point – human flourishing. The people of other nations need to flourish just as much as our own people. Indeed, so much is now globally connected that we are really talking about all of us flourishing together or all of us failing together.
I won’t get into the details of what these thoughts might lead to by way of policies. But we can certainly think of such things as free trade, free movement of people, immigration, refugees and of course international aid and international diplomacy. Empire is over – unless it is the empire of all humanity, or of the whole Earth biosphere. Today, I think, our level of pride in our nation should be based on its level of compassion. That is my belief. That is my hope.
