Compassion (3 min)

Image source: Macaaa / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

In the famous TV show The Office(US), there's an episode where the manager of the office is on leave and asks his number two guy to be in charge for the day. The number two guy, who's now the acting manager, comes up with a rule that all birthdays in a month will be celebrated together on one day to avoid too many breaks, cakes, parties, etc. It looks like an innocent rule on the surface, but soon back fires with all people who's birthdays are now going to celebrated on the same day now demanding their personalised cakes and party themes and actually displaying disappointment and dissent when they aren't being accommodated for. Our acting manager tries to calm the folks down, but there suddenly seems to be this gap between him and the rest of the office - people are talking about him like they used to talk about their actual manager, that he doesn't really care about them now that he's the manager, that they need to group together and fight the battle against him, etc. By the end of the episode the actual manager returns back to the scene, and our number two guy is actually relieved and tells him his experience of the day. The manager laughs it off and says that he tried the same rule once years ago and it backfired in a similar way, and also consoles him saying that he'll learn the art in some time.

Do you see what happened there though? When the number two guy was put in the manager's position, he got this glimpse of what it must be like to be him. We seldom do that, especially for people we feel are in 'better' positions than us. And that is what compassion is about. The next time you get this feeling about another person where you think their actions were wrong or out of order or unjustified, try to see that they are another human being just like you and in their own head, they might be feeling (about their actions, thoughts and emotions) just the way you do (about yours).

Whether this does or does not or should or should not affect how you react to a particular situation is beside the point. It's true nonetheless. For you, for me, for all.

"It is about recognising ourselves in each other, to try and locate the humanity in someone else. Not so much as to find their humanity, but to hold onto my own." - Deeyah Khan

<Another blog on compassion - Right and wrong, and beyond>

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