cthewind's Blog

Empathy on its own does not lead to compassion.

In fact, empathy can increase personal distress, when you take in the feelings of another as your own. Increased distress raises alert levels and decreases the range of tools available to respond to daily activities and interactions. Everything becomes an emergency.

Life on heightened alert—even through the exercise of empathy—reduces critical faculties of reason and perspective-taking. Behavior is contorted and people respond to one another as though out of their heads.

Self-protective behaviors continue, understandably, as more and more life unfolds in-person. Empathy is not enough to support our work together in this time.

We cannot stay in personal distress. As hard as it is, we must bend our attention—setting intentions in the present moment for prosocial behaviors. Prosocial is almost anything that reaches out instead of in.

According to Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Founder and Chairman of the Compassion Institute, compassion is rooted in awareness and intention and expressed in prosocial behavior.

Like empathy, it begins in feelings associated with common humanity.

Unlike empathy, which on its own may increase personal distress and decrease sociality, compassion relieves personal distress in being turned outward toward another.

Though risks in being together remain, we can practice compassion for ourselves and others by being aware of our circumstances and first responses and by setting intentions for pro-social good in our gatherings.

not by yourself

and not all at once

but slowly

by mercy

and shrouded in mystery

you will again hope

hope

best companion to fear

antidote to anger

lover of justice

expander of breath

truster of frail persons

redeemer of shame

hope

“that thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul”

hope

that foolishness bent forward

that only chance at future

only chance at all