Compassion

One of the lamest ways to begin any speech, sermon, or blog post is with a definition from a dictionary.

Please allow me to be momentarily lame. And thanks for your forgiveness in advance.

There's a word I want to define for you, something that I think is very important to understand. Something that very few of us remember on a consistent basis:

Compassion.

According to my very official source of Dictionary.com, here's the definition of compassion: 

1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

What's interesting to me is the way that this definition seems to fall into two pieces. The first piece sounds an awful lot like empathy, but includes the word sympathy, so I suppose it's different. The first piece of compassion includes a feeling.

Personally, I don't place much stock in feelings. Feelings can happen for any number of reasons, including (but not limited to!) a change in weather, hormones, or a bad pasta bowl from Olive Garden. Feelings are just that: something you feel. Nothing more. Not much else to them.

Now, granted, there's probably a little more to them than I am letting on, but I'm biased. But in my heart of hearts, I believe that any feelings not accompanied by action are hogwash. They're nonsense. They mean nothing.

And that's why I like the second part of this definition. True compassion is not only a feeling, but a desire. And while many would classify desires as feelings, I believe there's something more to desire.

Desire is craving. If you desire something, it means you want and sometimes even need something. Your heart and mind are telling you that you are lacking something, even if you really aren't. And more often than not, desire leads to my favorite result: action.

Now I've been skirting over where this emotion of sympathy and this desire are placed, but I think we all know where it lies. It lies within our hearts to help those in need. And I'm not talking about someone who is a middle-class resident of these United States and has a little debt.

No, I'm talking someone who doesn't have food on a regular basis, or lacks what we would consider basic rights: clean water, shoes, or education.

It is disturbing to me how many people are living in extreme, extreme poverty. Not USA poverty, where you can make $18,000/year and be considered in poverty. I'm talking about people who make as little as $1/day and somehow manage to live off of that. 

I hurt for those people. And as a result, I desire to "alleviate the suffering" that they endure, as the dictionary puts it. I have a serious obsession with my compassion for these people. I can't help it.

And so here we are now. At the point where you know. Where you're aware. And hopefully, to a point where the desire has kicked in. Allow me to help you fulfill that desire. There are a number of organizations that assist in impoverished situations, and you're fully capable of Google-ing such entities, but I definitely want to plug a couple here:

Compassion International - Compassion International is a non-profit who assists those who are needy and suffering through the primary avenue of child sponsorship. For much less than a Starbucks a day, you can impact the life of a child and his family.

World Vision - World Vision is another non-profit dedicated to assisting those in need around the world through child sponsorship. However, they are also very active in a number of other ways, which you can see through their website.

Invisible Children - A war has been raging for years and years in Uganda and beyond. The Lord's Resistance Army has been mindlessly killing throughout the country through the use of child soldiers, and Invisible Children is an organization who has been working to take a stand against this injustice in various ways. 

The Adventure Project - The Adventure Project is one of my favorite groups to talk about. They're a non-profit dedicated to changing how we give so that we can eradicate extreme poverty. They've engineered a number of creative projects that have assisted families and communities and are always looking for more people to join and help out.

Remember, a feeling without action is nothing more than some bad heartburn. Turn your compassion into something deeper, something more meaningful, something more real. Do something about it today.


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Questions: What are some of your favorite charitable organizations? What are some actions you can take today to fulfill your desire for compassion?

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This was a repost from September 2011.


image credit: wojtek2000 - sxc.hu