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altruism
May 2008 
Choosing Compassion
Posted on Nov 26th, 2007
by 
Spirit Eagle
Spirit Eagle
Recently a friend commented on a particularly challenging reality so many of us face as we attempt to live as caring, compassionate and connected beings. Her reaction came as the result of reading another blog I wrote in which I shared the story of a man whose relationship I lost as he lost all his relationships, his career, and even his mental health. Her observation spoke to the truth that there are no guarantees that even our best efforts will not end in loss and pain. We can do everything right in a relationship, but the results are not completely ours to control. There was sadness in her comments but also positive resolve to continue choosing compassion as a way of life.
Ever since reading those comments I have been thinking about them. I made the choice to be a compassionately loving person and there is no other path I would take. I believe I made that choice when I agreed to be in physical existence at this time. For me, there is no other way to live but to love without condition and to love with compassion.
I also became a bit curious about the distinction between compassion and altruism. Blame it on an inveterate desire to use words precisely. My daughter Maggie says, "Mom, you're such a Virgo...and so am I." However it plays out, I make efforts to express my most accurate meaning and hope my words are understood as I mean them to be understood. That is why I checked my definitions to be assured of clarity. Of course, the desire for clarity around those two terms has led me on another merry mind chase.
To share (for the sake of clarity) before I proceed on with why I continue to choose a compassionate life: altruism is about doing for the benefit of others without expectation of return. Compassion is all about altruism but with an added motivation - to alleviate suffering. In either instance, there is no thought of or desire for recompense or return. It seems to me that compassion is altruism taken to the level of the heart in a manner suggesting a sharing from a deeply personal place. There appears to be a more passionate connection between the one who loves and acts with compassion and the one whose suffering evokes such response. Altruism is a good and necessary quality. Compassion makes it personal.
As I think about being compassionate, I realize it would be so much easier, less challenging, take less energy and time to stay present with people on the level of altruism. Altruistic people do care, otherwise they would not give so generously to facilitate all manner of beneficial activities. To love beyond that place is to become more deeply connected to the lives of those who suffer and seek not only to improve the welfare of those who have need, but to seek to understand the individual pain the need causes. Perhaps it is such understanding that recognizes the often painful reality that such needs cannot always be resolved completely and the opportunities for continued suffering are abundant because of insufficient resolution. Yet, even with continued suffering, compassion seeks to ease the pain even in the midst of its cause. Compassion is not so much about doing as being.
Even as I think about all these things, I realize I choose compassion because it is who I am. There is no other answer. It is, though, a definite choice. It comes from a place where I have experienced and now live in complete awareness and growing understanding of unconditional love. To have realized I receive the gift of unconditional love evokes the only response I understand, to love unconditionally myself. This is action, not a feeling when it is comfortable and easy. Loving without condition and acting with compassion are anything but easy and are often very uncomfortable. Because this loving is unconditional, there is no motiviation, no expectation, no desire for anything but the ability to continue. Love is for its own sake.
On occasion, sometimes frequently, other times not at all, there are the "warm fuzzies" of feeling to help the process along. Because I seek to love without condition and because I have the gift of discernment, seeing people and situations very clearly, I recognize easily the ugliness, occasional stupidity, frequent selfishness and all the foibles, mistakes and mis-steps all of us experience as humans. Yet, loving without condition allows me to see and to experience such challenges without losing my balance. Along with the darkness a person can show to everyone around I also see the beauty in that person's soul, sometimes unrecognizable or even unknown to that person. The challenge is to know when to speak and when to be silent, when to act and when to stand still. Above all, respect for each person is key to true compassion. There are times nothing can be done to ease the rough path a person walks as result of the choices he or she has made. Compassion, then, is standing beside the road and being ready for whatever can arise, even if it is nothing at all.
Ever since reading those comments I have been thinking about them. I made the choice to be a compassionately loving person and there is no other path I would take. I believe I made that choice when I agreed to be in physical existence at this time. For me, there is no other way to live but to love without condition and to love with compassion.
I also became a bit curious about the distinction between compassion and altruism. Blame it on an inveterate desire to use words precisely. My daughter Maggie says, "Mom, you're such a Virgo...and so am I." However it plays out, I make efforts to express my most accurate meaning and hope my words are understood as I mean them to be understood. That is why I checked my definitions to be assured of clarity. Of course, the desire for clarity around those two terms has led me on another merry mind chase.
To share (for the sake of clarity) before I proceed on with why I continue to choose a compassionate life: altruism is about doing for the benefit of others without expectation of return. Compassion is all about altruism but with an added motivation - to alleviate suffering. In either instance, there is no thought of or desire for recompense or return. It seems to me that compassion is altruism taken to the level of the heart in a manner suggesting a sharing from a deeply personal place. There appears to be a more passionate connection between the one who loves and acts with compassion and the one whose suffering evokes such response. Altruism is a good and necessary quality. Compassion makes it personal.
As I think about being compassionate, I realize it would be so much easier, less challenging, take less energy and time to stay present with people on the level of altruism. Altruistic people do care, otherwise they would not give so generously to facilitate all manner of beneficial activities. To love beyond that place is to become more deeply connected to the lives of those who suffer and seek not only to improve the welfare of those who have need, but to seek to understand the individual pain the need causes. Perhaps it is such understanding that recognizes the often painful reality that such needs cannot always be resolved completely and the opportunities for continued suffering are abundant because of insufficient resolution. Yet, even with continued suffering, compassion seeks to ease the pain even in the midst of its cause. Compassion is not so much about doing as being.
Even as I think about all these things, I realize I choose compassion because it is who I am. There is no other answer. It is, though, a definite choice. It comes from a place where I have experienced and now live in complete awareness and growing understanding of unconditional love. To have realized I receive the gift of unconditional love evokes the only response I understand, to love unconditionally myself. This is action, not a feeling when it is comfortable and easy. Loving without condition and acting with compassion are anything but easy and are often very uncomfortable. Because this loving is unconditional, there is no motiviation, no expectation, no desire for anything but the ability to continue. Love is for its own sake.
On occasion, sometimes frequently, other times not at all, there are the "warm fuzzies" of feeling to help the process along. Because I seek to love without condition and because I have the gift of discernment, seeing people and situations very clearly, I recognize easily the ugliness, occasional stupidity, frequent selfishness and all the foibles, mistakes and mis-steps all of us experience as humans. Yet, loving without condition allows me to see and to experience such challenges without losing my balance. Along with the darkness a person can show to everyone around I also see the beauty in that person's soul, sometimes unrecognizable or even unknown to that person. The challenge is to know when to speak and when to be silent, when to act and when to stand still. Above all, respect for each person is key to true compassion. There are times nothing can be done to ease the rough path a person walks as result of the choices he or she has made. Compassion, then, is standing beside the road and being ready for whatever can arise, even if it is nothing at all.
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A beautiful expression of unconditional love,
it reminds me, like a tree with its roots implanted deep into the earth, no matter how deep or fast the river flows, the tree remains beautiful and green, it just goes right on producing its luscious fruit.
It is with trust and knowing that all done in love is by far the greatest of gift.
You are a kind, true and wonderful person to understand so, from your heart.
With Love and smiles :)
Ange, thank you for your thoughts. I love trees by a river. I can sit and listen to the music for hours.
Thank you for your thoughts on this subject. I hear you! :) and it does resonate.
What you say makes sense to me, and I think that I probably spend a lot more time living from altruism than from compassion. Thank you for teaching me about that distinction. There is nothing I can do to alleviate the suffering of someone who chooses to suffer, right? I mean, if one were to point out that they are making a choice, or that there are other choices, or if one were to offer them help or support and they choose to dismiss whatever is said to them as “stupid,” then we can hold an attitude of compassion for them, and that's it, right? Maybe I fall back into altrusim because sometimes people will try to control me or put me down, and it hurts. I'll think about this some. There is a current situation where I can look at these ideas as they play out. Thank you for your help and teachings! :)
Martha, thank you for sharing your thoughts. First, please don't misunderstand the value of altruism. It is most appropriate at times when connecting with suffering is not the best approach to a given situation. Also, acting from compassion (or simply being present with compassion) is far more difficult from the aspect of retaining very necessary objectivity in order to retain clarity and balance. Probably one of the most challenging realities of living in a compassionate manner is knowing how absolutely not in control we truly are. Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do is to remain silent and to respect another so deeply as not to interfere or to speak inappropriately, no matter what.
In a business setting, this plays out as dealing with the process, not the person when something is failing in the process and a person is just about always the cause. Although this is not particularly relevant in some respects, it is a helpful distinction towards understanding what unconditional love and compassion demand of one who lives in this manner.
Perhaps this personal example will help. I have an adult daughter (the middle one) who is a strong, intelligent and capable person. I have story after story about her from her conception forward (I was sick the minute I got pregnant and stayed that way the whole 8 1/2 months). Sufficient to say, she was a challenge child. She can take a great deal of credit, though, for helping me learn the best way to approach situations in which I know the outcome is likely to be unpleasant but in which I have no power because they are not my situations.
One of my parenting characteristics involved allowing what I still believe to have been reasonable freedom for each child to make choices to the degree his/her maturity level would allow to be safe for them. Such a style did make for six independent, decisive, thinking people who are all adults now. However, Daughter #2 always (ALWAYS) pushed that as far as she could. By the time she was seven I had developed a method with her. She consistently demanded things be the way she wanted and any remonstration from a parent would serve only to cement her determination. So, what I did was to engage her in discussion about whatever the situation of the moment was. I asked her questions about what choice she wanted to pursue and tried to offer possible outcomes and elicit how she might expect to manage any of those outcomes. If she persisted in what I truly believed would be unsuccessful choices she realized soon enough she would have to take the responsibility for her choices. The older she became, the more serious those choices and outcomes became. There were occasions when I simply refused her permission when it was the wiser option. However, I found it much more effective to give her the latitude to make mistakes and to fail. She learned how to succeed.
There were many times I could have eased her suffering over failures and mistakes. I love her deeply and without condition,and I did not like seeing her tears and frustrations. But making things easy at the moment would not have benefited her in the long haul. By the time she was in graduate school working towards and MBA, she had learned to be very successful, in part, I am sure, because she had learned to anticipate and prepare for outcomes from her early childhood. Her determination to be right did make an enormous difference in a major university's graduate school of business. When they declined to support an MBA with a focus on international business development (this was in the early 90's), she resigned…the first liberal arts graduate ever accepted for the MBA program at that school. The school's dean and steering committee chose, instead, not to accept her resignation and to close admissions to the program for a year while they reevaluated and redesigned the graduate program. She got her MBA with honors.
My comments during all this? Make sure you can back your position with facts and data, and if you truly believe in what you are doing, then go for it all. I kept my hands and mouth out of it otherwise, just as I had been doing since she was a tiny child. It wasn't always easy and often it was very, very painful and difficult.
Silence often is the most compassionate gift we can give out of respect for others.
As far as being self-protective, there is nothing wrong there, particularly if it affords you the opportunity to step back and examine your own suffering and why it is a reality. That is another opportunity for thought and writing at another time. So is the subject of suffering another opportunity for thought and writing. Even saying you hurt in the process gives someone the opportunity to be compassionate towards you. And, yes, holding the attitude of compassion is perfect. It is offering a gift of gentle respect and love and leaves the other person free to choose for themselves whether or not to accept.
Walk in beauty