What are Acts of Compassion?

Well, I guess this should be an easy one to answer. We all perform acts of kindness. Giving a freezing volunteer something warm to drink. Smiling at those around you. Dropping off warm clothing to someone who hasn t any. Giving food to someone how is hungry. Blah Blah Blah right? :o) The question becomes then what changes these from simple acts of kindness (which I highly recommend by the way) to real acts of compassion?

For me the answer is the intent. We have often been nice, listening to a friend in pain, stopping to help a stranger who has been stranded, but in order for these to acts of compassion one must care. I am not speaking of caring about being a good person or even doing the right thing. Compassion is seeded in the care of others not ourselves or our interests. We may not be being selfish mind you. So being a good person is great and important but that in and of itself is not compassion.

This being the case, acts of compassion are about why we do the act. Let us look at a simple example;

The act of picking up a glove for a person who has dropped one.

There are actually many reasons it would be wonderful to pick the glove up. And just being poite is a good one. However, let us say you notice the person is elderly, uses a walker and has trouble moving. Let us say that they have seen the glove fall and look at it for a moment as they seem to decide whether or not it is worth the effort to retrieve it. You feel a pang in your heart because you feel in those few seconds what it must be like for them with their limitations. Maybe you had a reason to have limitations at one time yourself. And suddenly you are them. You are where they are and feel so much of what they feel. You have entered their very moment. You pick up the glove try to clean it off a bit and hand it to them. You may even make a statement like, I loose mine all the time . This helps salvage their dignity as well. Now this is a very small example. It does however give one the idea.

The act of picking up the glove would have been a nice thing to do no matter what. And there is nothing saying every act has to be full of compassion. But what if we chose each act to be full of compassion. Not pity but real open caring compassion. At these times we can truly share in a persons life, moment and consciousness. We can care differently and so in my opinion be even more effective. Be well and blessings in your practice of compassion. Rev. Anna :o)