I learned something new about the word “compassion.”  I have already written about sympathy and empathy and the differences between them.  However, I thought that empathy and compassion were pretty much the same thing.  They aren’t, with a very distinct difference.  While empathetic people “feel” the distress and pain of others and share the experience by “being there,” compassion is a feeling of wanting to share the suffering of that person, with the addition of wanting to do something to alleviate the pain of that person.  All three of these emotional responses are signs of caring, but they serve to help another person differently.

To me, sympathy is the least helpful to a person in distress.  This is because it is actually just feeling sorry for another person.  That can sometimes make things worse, depending on the person one is trying to comfort.  Compassion, while having the attribute of being there with the other person and sharing their suffering, there is the desire to do something to try and make things better. The person who is distressed may not be ready for that kind of help.  That’s because sometimes, people need to fully experience the pain of their situation in order to get through it.  After that  happens, solutions can be found.

Of course, each of us is different in our response to a tragedy in our lives.  And so are our needs at any moment.  Recently, I read something that can be very helpful to do when one wants to help a person who is grieving.  Instead of saying, “Let me know if there is anything I can do,” just do something for that person that is very practical.  This includes bringing food, which many people already do in the case of losing a loved one.  Walking the dog or mowing the lawn, just takes a task away from the endless list of daily activities that need to be done.  And don’t be offended if it isn’t what they want or need.  Be flexible.  It’s not about us in those situations.  These aren’t my ideas.  But I think that they are good ones. 

When a tragedy occurs, whether one tries to be sympathetic, empathetic or compassionate, the important thing is caring, which is at the heart of these attitudes.  Caring is the most important thing.  If we want to be good human beings, that’s always what it takes.