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.
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