Compassion is the Heart of Kindness

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive.
- Dalai Lama

 

By choosing to live with kindness, we also invited compassion to accompany us on our journey. Compassion is concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, combined with a desire to help. It also has another dimension, which is usually ignored.

It Begins with Self-Compassion

If your compassion does not include yourself,
it is incomplete.
… Buddha

Many of us carry within us regrets and even shame for things we have done in the past. We need to take time to accept our past, to forgive ourselves and to focus on living now in the best way we can.

This is the time to be kind to yourself. Set time aside every day to nurture yourself.

You might connect with a friend and have a little adventure or just a heart-to-heart conversation. Often friends see us through a more forgiving lens than we see ourselves, and they can give us the uplift that we need.

You may also be nourished by time to yourself. It might be quiet time with a cup of coffee or tea, writing in a journal, listening to your favorite music, lingering in a soothing bath or going for a walk. You might leave a favorite book by your bed to read at night or watch a TV show that makes you laugh.

A journal provides a way to reflect on your day and to make sense of all that happened. By recording your interactions with others, you have a way to acknowledge yourself for things that went well and to think about those that didn’t. Then you can set an intention for tomorrow and ask your inner wisdom to guide you to a better approach next time.

Think about activities that support you. Then be sure to incorporate some of them in your daily life.

Treating Others with Compassion

It’s one of the hardest things in the world to be willing
to empathize with a person in a moment when they seem not to deserve it the most.
Megan Phelps-Roper

The way we view each other lays the foundation on which everything else is built. For most of us, it is normal to see some people as friend or family, some as stranger who seems like a nice person. It is easy to share a smile or a kind word with them.

Other people who show up in our lives trigger a different response. We may quickly have thoughts of judgment, which make it more difficult to feel moved to kindness. As we expand our compassion, more and more, we show up as a channel for love in every encounter with others, no matter how they show up.

Living with Kindness means deciding to take the best part of us out into the world. As we expand how we express our kindness, more and more, we show up as a channel for love wherever we go, in every encounter with others, no matter how they are showing up.

It’s easy and rewarding to expand our kindness journey by joining a local organization as a volunteer. One advantage of this step into service to those in need is the opportunity it offers us for our own personal growth. Often, we are asked to step out of our comfort zone and to expand our understanding of others less fortunate – perhaps some of whom we may have judged in the past.

Nobody has taken the concept of love-in-action to a higher level than Father Gregory Boyle, whose work with former gang members and ex-offenders has brought him world-wide acclaim.

He shares with us an expanded vision of a compassionate society:

“Imagine a circle of compassion and imagine no one is standing outside that circle.
That is the goal and to that end, we stand with the people who suffer,
with the poor and the powerless, the voiceless.

And to that end, we stand with the people whose dignity has been denied
and we stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

And when you’re really lucky, you get to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out.
You get to stand with the demonized, so the demonizing will stop,
and with the disposable, so the day will come when we stop throwing people away.”

As a pastor in the poorest Catholic parish, with the highest concentration of gang activity in Los Angeles, Father Boyle sought a compassionate and effective approach to gang members. He eventually left his parish duties and helped found Homeboy Industries, which became the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.

This not-for-profit organization serves high risk men and women by offering hope, training and job skills, with the goal of helping them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of their families and their community.

By serving some of the most demonized people in our society, Father Boyle and his staff and volunteers show us the rewards of taking loving kindness into places that had been written off as untouchable. They created a truly safe and loving place where lives are transformed – the lives of those who are served and those who serve them, as well.

“All of us are called to go the very edges of the circle of compassion,
with sure and certain hope that if you stand there, the circle will widen,
and people who are outside will be let in.”

That is an invitation to all of us to expand our own circle of compassion. When we do, we will be transformed in the process.

But we each get to choose the path that is right for us at this moment in our lives. Every act of kindness makes a difference in the world. You are in charge of deciding how you share your love with others.

No matter how you do it, you are a force for good and you do make a difference in the world.

Compassion is even more powerful than courage. Sure, with courage
you can conquer the world, but only with compassion,
you can heal and build it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru

Together, We Are Building a Kinder World

Most people underestimate the power we all have to influence the direction of our community, our country, and even our world. We are interconnected in ways we have never seen before.

Community has now become, not just a neighborhood, but a country-wide or world-wide gathering of people who come together electronically to explore a shared interest or even work together on a shared mission. With the benefits of video gatherings, we can see each other and interact in a more meaningful way.

We are also able to hear what others are doing to address problems that we are facing in our lives or our country. We learn from each other across physical boundaries, as we find that we are not separate, but one extended human family with a lot to share with each other.

As I write this, we are now all witnessing the unfolding upheaval of people’s lives in Ukraine. We are also seeing an outpouring of compassion and constructive support from people of many countries. The world seems to have come together, despite differences that we might have, in support of people we do not know.

We are experiencing our kinship.

Gregory Boyle said that his work arose from two questions that he lived with:

“There’s an idea that’s taken root in the world …
that there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.
How do we stand against that idea?"

“How do we achieve a compassion that allows us to stand in awe of what others have to carry
rather than stand in judgment of how they carry it?”

Perhaps considering these questions could illuminate all our lives.

      Photo by Kaishin | OneLushLife on Unsplash

We believe this song perfectly expresses the message of compassion:

Heal the World - Michael Jackson

Gregory Boyle has had a deep impact on us, and we invite you to learn more about him. Click below to be moved by some personal stories and to see the amazing work at Homeboy Industries:

A Transformed Life

Compassion from Strangers

An up-close look at the people of Homeboy Industries

The 9 Cs of kindness are words that describe important aspects of a kindness journey. We invite you to check them out:  Choice, Commitment, Connection, Curiosity, Courage, Compassion, Change, Community, Celebration

What are your thoughts? Please comment below.

Help us to spread the message of kindness. If you know others who might appreciate these ideas, please share below. Thank you.

We’re grateful that you are on this journey with us.

With love from our hearts to yours,
Pat and Larry