True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others.
Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.
Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.
Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
As Christians, our compassion is simply a response to the love that God has already shown us.
The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.
Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.
When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others.
Compassion is loving others enough to say or do what is appropriate from an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome.