Tomorrow

"...We were the Kings and Queens of Promise..."

Today

"...I need a hero to save me now..."

F sharp

I think music is crucial to understanding and perception. Especially when it comes to aspects of love. Today, we have more love songs than we know what to do with, because love is important and multi-faceted. The part of love that influences compassion isn't very often reflected in songs, but when it is, oh when it does...

It's

I've talked myself in circles. I've talked this all to death.

So now of course it's:

http://www.jellotime.com/

Cheer

We (Original poetry by me)

I will possess you

forever

in my mind & heart

I promise

(I love you)

(Written 9/10/09)

We were the many,

We were the few,

We were the broken,

calling to you.

We were the homeless

Sickness, and bound,

We were the peoples,

you rescued and found.

(Written 10/6/09)

I suppose

if it's true

if we're born

this way

then it must

be true also

that we

are

[this way]

(Written 11/9/09)

Obvious

The most important cause of compassion is love. Without love there is no empathy. Without love and empathy there is no compassion. You cannot love your parents, your siblings, your children, without caring for them on a deep level. On such a deep level that when they're hurt you feel an insatiable obligation to make it better. To make them feel better. Often times you love them so much, you would do anything for them.

This isn't limited to just family either. Over this past summer I was fortunate enough to participate in the three day retreat provided by Campus Ministry where we just got to go around helping people. On the first day we played kickball and tag with students at a school in a neighboring town. On the second we had a "Water Day" which consisted of us getting completely soaked while playing all sorts of games with children living with cerebral palsy. On the third we went back to the school in the neighboring town and we had a festival of sorts. These three days were spent being completely selfless. We were there, purely for the kids. Purely to make the kids happy. And it turned out to be a not so selfless venture. I was rewarded for my compassion, by the unconditional love of a two year old boy, who we taught how to throw water balloons at the older children. Both days, he refused to let me leave, and let me tell you that little boy had a strong grip for such small hands. Now when I look back, I think not about what I did for those children, but what they did for me. A few of us from that trip are going to chaperone next year's adventures. Purely because it was fun for us. Not so selfless, sure, but so driven by compassion it's unfathomable.

I love the act of holding a door for someone. I love when it happens to me and when I do it for someone else. I don't know why I'm so fixated on this particular action, beyond that it's such a simple act of kindness. It's just a simple expression of love for another human being.

I live very much by the principle of the golden rule. I know what it's like to be treated like nothing, like less than nothing. (It's not fun to say the least.) I'm not going to do that to someone. Partially because I don't think people deserve that and of course partially because I really don't want to be treated like that every again. Maybe that's why the act of holding open a door is so huge for me. Because it's love, compassion, and respect all in one... I don't know.

Love drove the creators of To Write Love On Her Arms (a charity to help those suffering from depression and addiction http://www.twloha.com/) to care about the suffering in the world. They loved their one friend so much, and let their compassion drive their actions, to help her. Where love is a direct cause of compassion, care is a direct result. Love for the children of Uganda, led the creators of Invisible Children (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php) to lobby for so many years for the end of the longest running genocide in the world, and it leads them to continue on lobbying and fundraising, and sending as much aid as possible over there to help those children. The slogan on a TWLOHA t-shirt reads "Love is the Movement." It's taken from the title (and chorus) of a Switchfoot song. It's not only a slogan, it's a message for the world. Love is the movement. The movement towards compassion, towards empathy, towards kindness.

I work at an after school care program for kids age five to ten on Fridays. Every week I go, I see needy kids. Not needy in the sense that they don't have toys, clothes, good school supplies, etc. Most of these kids are varying degrees of attention starved. Not because their parents don't love them, or their siblings don't love them, but because they are shunted from place to place throughout the week in groups of hundreds of children just to receive the care that their parents cannot provide and also be able to work as is needed. This past Friday was a Francis, Michael and Karena day. Francis is five, and very energetic. Mostly the older girls in the program take care of him and the other members of his age group. But on Friday he jumped around and hit his head on the metal doorknob. The trip to get an icepack soon became an hour of constant company. But he needed it. When he was ready to go off and play with his stuffed moose alone, he did, but up to that point my hand was locked in his. Karena, age seven, was not injured on Friday. In fact, she was more energetic than usual. I was her personal jungle gym, and sofa for an hour. She needed the attention, so I gave it to her. Michael is ten, and I'm positive he thinks he is Mr. Cool. But he needed my attention on Friday too. He thinks Phineas and Ferb is fantastic (as he should) and so I let him spew out all his favorite quotes and storylines, all the while consistently agreeing at the awesomeness of that television show. I didn't help his Mr. Cool perception, I'm afraid, because he thinks it's the greatest thing that an adult like me (if you could call me that) loves the show too. I love these kids, Francis, Karena, Michael and all the others. I don't work there for the money (because I don't get paid much) but because these kids all need me. Yes, that sounds supremely selfish. But only without the affirmation that I definitely need them too. No matter how hard my week has been, I go there and am surrounded by childish joy all afternoon, and then no matter how exhausted I am when I get home, I come home with a smile on my face.

Love is the greatest, most important cause of compassion. It is the umbrella over all the kindness in the world. It is the driving wind of empathy. And it is really essential to the idea of "goodness in our world." We don't know where love comes from, we don't know where good comes from, we don't know where compassion lives in our physical bodies. But we do know all these things exist, and reside in each and every person. "To infinity and beyond."

Words (narrate as if you have a cold)

Did you know that swear words actually help to relieve physical pain? Or that a single kind word to someone could leave them smiling for hours?

I'm the kind of person that will blush horrendously when a compliment is paid. I can go around saying "Oh yeah, I'm awesome," and not blush, because honestly I don't mean a single word of it. It's just me fooling around. But if someone were to actually say to me, "You are fantastic and amazing," I would go as bright red as a tomato. And chances are, as soon as the compliment payer left the room, I would smile bright enough to be the star of that Rembrandt commercial from a few years back.

Words are excessively important. Obviously they are our means of communication. We don't hold conversations by tying knots in strings, or squawking like birds, we use carefully constructed language. But they also say a lot about the culture of humanity. For example, we have many words to label goodness. There are the typical ones such as kindness and caring. But then there are the more important descriptors of this act.

Compassion is defined (in Merriam-Webster's dictionary) as mercy, tenderness, and a wish to relieve suffering. Compassion and empathy (defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionary as direct identification with/understanding of another person's situation, feelings, and motives) are inseparable. Though not interchangeable, empathy is a direct cause for compassion. Both compassion and empathy are under the umbrella cause of love. Love generates mercy, love connects people, love is the great motivator essentially. Even if you don't love your neighbor, if their house burns down you're going to help them, you're going to feel compassion for them. Chances are, if you don't love them you will mostly feel pity over compassion or empathy, which means you'll feel bad for them, but you won't really do anything to help. Compassion is the kind of the thing that drives a human to buy clean water for another human living halfway around the world. Empathy is the kind of driving force that brings a student to help another student study for an exam last minute, because studying the last thing on their mind in the week beforehand. Love is the kind of universal instigator that brings people throughout the world together at times of great war, happiness or sorrow..

In Buddhist teaching, compassion is a result of wanting to end the general suffering of the world. In much of the scientific culture, compassion is viewed as the healthy response to the suffering of others, though it is also projected that women have the tendency to be more compassionate due to their nurturing instincts. In Christian teaching, compassion/empathy is pretty much the most important, most basic principle taught. The golden rule is "treat others the way you want to be treated," i.e. treat others with compassion, love, empathy, kindness. Everyone taught that from childhood to adulthood has the idea that compassion is essential to a happy life.

I don't know why I was made the way I was, or what my purpose is. I have plans though, goals I'd like to achieve before I die. Number one on the list, is "Save someone's life." I don't care if this happens indirectly or directly, such as donating money to a charity vs. pushing someone out of the path of a speeding bus. Is this caused by compassion? Probably. I am the type of person that is deeply moved to want to help by seeing people hurting. Someone is crying, I want to make it better, plain and simple. Like, when watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I knew Draco Malfoy was plotting to kill Dumbledore going in to see the movie. I knew from the character presented to me in the book, that he was doing so reluctantly. But when reading a book, you can absorb what you want to absorb about a character and I absorbed that he was a horrible, awful, stupid, cruel little boy, and if he was gonna kill Dumbledore, then he deserved everything he got. But to see Tom Felton portray this tortured soul on screen. To be forced to confront the inner agony of Draco Malfoy's task, I was moved to compassion. In fact, I turned to my best friend in the theater, in the middle of the movie, and proclaimed that I would gladly kill Dumbledore for him, and just hug him until he stopped crying. I am that overly empathetic person. Is it because I'm a girl? I don't know. I don't really think so. Is it because I'm more familiar with internal suffering than others? Maybe. Is it because I truly believe that everyone deserves love in their life? That's more likely.

I think just as we're all born innocent, with an equal penchant for good and evil, we are also born with the clean slate of compassion. As we grow and learn, compassion refines. I don't honestly think that anyone can give up their feelings of compassion. I think you can twist it or distort it, or ignore it, but it's still there.

Most of all, I think everyone feels, so everyone must feel compassion in some form. You wouldn't kick a puppy down the stairs in the same way that you wouldn't starve an infant. (Well, I really really hope you wouldn't.) It all comes back to compassion and empathy, under the umbrella of love.

Sometimes I feel like, I can't say anything beyond the ramble of fuzzy ideals. But I feel like these musical words, these carefully chosen poems of lyrics of words, say so much what I wanted to say and express, and what I would still like to chisel out of my cloudy explanations.

Hippo Camp

I like when people hold doors open for me. I've held the door open for many, many people over my life, and I've had the door held open for me a lot too, but there's nothing better than when you are a good five feet down the hall from the door and someone stands there and waits for you with it open. Granted, there's that initial pressure of that "Oh man, they're standing there waiting. I have to walk faster so that they don't have to wait too long..." feeling, but the people who are willing to stand there and hold doors open like that are clearly more relaxed than most.

I hate when people are a foot in front of you and won't even push the door open enough so that it falls slowly and you can catch it on the way in. Most of these instances are followed by a scowl, (or angry muttering depending on how little time they would have had to wait in order to pass the door off to the next person). Now, I'm guilty of this too. It happens. But I always cringe when I do it, and feel bad, as if I can feel that person's scowl burning into the back of my head.

I like the human brain. It's really cool. The space responsible for human memory in the brain is called the hippocampus. (And yes, I remember this clearly because it sounds like "hippo camp"). But I don't think the brain is necessarily responsible for why a person does something good like hold a door open for someone else. Granted, the learned instances of good behavior are stored there. How would anyone know, for instance, to hold a door open for someone if they were never taught that it was polite, or if they hadn't seen someone else do it before?

I'm more into the idea of the semi-vague explanation of conscience. Nobody can point out a specific place on the body where the conscience is (unless they have a Jiminy Cricket tattoo). Most people if you ask them will probably point to the region of their lower torso, i.e. their stomach or their gut, maybe their belly button. But they can't tell you exactly what it's connected to like veins to the heart, or the brain to the spine, or exactly what its physical function is. But it's there. When I forget to hold the door, "ouch" there it is, right in my gut, saying "Hey, you really should have held that door open."

I think the conscience is responsible for moral decisions that make you do good, and it provides a deep sense of compassion for doing good.

Agent P

There's no disputing that good exists in the world. Why else would I have been able to gather over one hundred dollars in spare change, from a bunch of teenagers, to donate to those in need of food? Why else would someone in a long line of cars pause to let someone out of their driveway? Why else would there be Christmas presents?

Why else would a secret agent platypus constantly thwart the efforts of a semi-evil scientist bent on conquering the tri-state area and then run back home just in time to make a pair of genius little boys happy?

I was watching the Christmas special of Phineas and Ferb last night, and watching it, all you could see were instances of good being done. These kids build a giant clubhouse as a "thank you" to Santa Clause. Then they create Christmas for a devastated town that has been labeled "naughty."

In fact, I compiled a list of why these kids decided to be good:

1) To stay off the naughty list (except Buford who had a last minute redemption theory)

2) To help others (i.e. the town of Danville)

3) To stop evil (in the case of Perry the Platypus aka Agent P)

4) Because they're in love (even if Candace's brand of love for Jeremy is a little psycho)

5) Personal gain (Baljeet desperately wants to get a kiss)

6) It's their job (in the case of Santa and the elves)

7) It's the right thing to do (i.e. a thank you present for Santa)

8) It makes someone happy (everyone)

Yes, it's a silly list. And yes, it's a silly show. But that doesn't make the good any less real.

Of course good exists, here in December 2009. It's staring you in the face.