The Power of Compassion
There have been times in our lives when we have felt things which have not happened particularly to us but to people around us. We have watched movies which made us feel about issues which have never touched our lives , and often moved us in ways which made us feel like doing something about them. That is the beauty of being a human being, we possess the imagination and empathy required to put ourselves in the position of people who do not have the privileges that we do.
It is what makes us human, to the very core.
It baffles me how oblivious we are to the power we possess in our hearts.
We hear about activists and NGOs taking steps to eradicate injustice and cruelty , doing their part in making this world a better place. But that isn’t the norm , really. It is not the rule. It is something they do by going out of the way of their comfortable lives. They get uncomfortable. They rise, and bring up people who have been downtrodden by society. That is the power of compassion. Not the survival of the fittest, but the happiness of the mass.
Imagine a world where this was the priority and achievements weren’t limited to just cracking exams and earning huge amounts of money, doing things just for ourselves. Imagine that being the norm. Where donation was part of culture, and achievements didn’t belong to individuals but to whole communities. That is true power, and it runs way deeper than the power which politics promise, or the power which comes with shiny titles.
A person who really made me wish for a world like that is J.K.
Rowling. Before becoming a famous writer, she used to work in Amnesty International where she helped victims of inhumane crimes recover from trauma they went through. It touched her so deeply, she made it a point to donate more than half of her wealth to the causes she felt for. Articles all over the internet awe over how she could’ve been one of the richest women in the world but she gave it all up so much so that now she is ‘poor’. To me it feels like she is still the richest of them all, because money is not what makes her rich. Her life itself has been a narrative the world needs to learn from. She has enough money to live a comfortable enough life , but most importantly , she is also the reason why a lot of people go to bed with filled stomachs and a future to look forward to.
We consider ourselves to be the smartest beings on earth but we fail to understand what’s wrong with the world, really. How can so much cruelty and suffering survive if we consider ourselves to be beings of such intelligence and capable of compassion? It is because we let every insignificant, vain thing around us become important. We forget that there is so much more to do in life than fight over petty conflicts of opinion, put our mindless pride on a pedestal, and build wars around it.
I wish our education itself taught us more about how harmful ignorance can be, and how powerful compassion can be. I wish we knew about the suffering of people all over the world, and did more with the power which resides within us.
All we can do is work towards a better world where kindness is the norm.
