Hot Topics: Compassion and Empathy
Feeling others is the mark of a higher consciousness that we need to achieve.
We had another incredible connection in our HumansFirst meeting on Friday night. In order to participate this week I had to miss the last Friday night meal of our long week of Passover here in Israel. But it was important to me to be in the meeting.
I shared in the hangout that I was planning the whole week to write a post about how Passover symbolizes the purifying process our ego has to go through, but Pharaoh (my ego!) wouldn’t let me! I was totally enslaved to my ego the whole week!
And I actually went into this meeting with my ego leading the way, thinking it will probably not be that exciting and may even be a total waste of time. But since I already had my first and second experiences in the HumansFirst hangout, I was able to override my ego and participate.
Cyndee Lake was the facilitator this week and her theme was all about compassion and empathy. As the meeting got started I couldn’t help thinking how I know all this stuff already, and what can this meeting possibly add to my deep knowledge of the subject?
Imagine a world where people have no reason to be self-absorbed and are free to be compassionate toward others.
But everyone started opening up and sharing stories about compassion and kindness, and this is what happened …
Two participants shared stories about how their 14 and 15 year olds had expressed deep compassion for other humans — the stories were very moving. Then another participant shared how his 15 year old decided to bring a homeless person into their home, without even asking him at first! I have a daughter who is almost 15 so these stories really resonated. What parent wouldn’t aspire for their kids to have this compassionate attitude to others? Clearly this positive human behavior comes more naturally to the next generation, and later on we discussed if we are born with these attributes or learn them.
Kevin Strauss brought up a very good point about how compassionate we all are when there is a big catastrophe, and the need to think about how we can be like that on a daily basis. Jordan also spoke about what happens when a community experiences tragedy, and how people have the freedom to be vulnerable in those states. She would like us to live from a “place of compassion not prompted by crisis.”
Some other friends shared the extremely difficult circumstances of their upbringing: a sibling with down syndrome, another growing up in a home filled with violence and devoid of any compassion at all — to the point of even almost being killed by a family member.
Cyndee shared how a single act of compassion toward an old man in an airport lounge where travelers were experiencing an annoying delay, had a ripple effect on the entire group of people there. She used that story to emphasize that compassion isn’t always about grand gestures.
HumansFirst co-founder Kevin Monroe shared how one of his children and his wife suddenly became foster parents to three really small children. How they posted in a group that the baby needed PJ’s, and how three pairs appeared within about 15 minutes. How a family provided a beautiful crib that they had been hoping to give to foster parents. We talked about the forums where you can get anything for free and how wonderful our society can be.
At this point our hearts were open and Zander Townend started saying some beautiful things about how “empathetic people can take compassionate acts, and help wake people up to the amount of pain in the world.” “These are god’s hands”, the healer said, “I have the power to do what I can to change things in the world.” To him it all comes down to having a compassionate heart, and allowing that to come through the infinite creativity of different people, who have different skills.
Brian Kelly talked about how difficult it is to access compassion unless we have empathy. How if our energy is self-absorbed, we won’t be able to feel for others.
As the talk continued, I found myself grappling with my ego. I started thinking to myself that much of the meeting had already gone by, and no one had called upon me to comment, and I hadn’t contributed anything to the meeting so far. At least not outwardly. So I started talking about what’s been on my mind throughout this long week of Passover — the human ego and Pharaoh’s absolute control over it.
I talked about how the ego gives us this illusion of separation, but that we are really all one. How having empathy is the mark of a higher consciousness, because it’s where we actually enter into another person’s feelings and mind. Not to invade it, but to feel empathy. To feel that we are indeed one, together. That’s when Cyndee had a beautiful aha moment and said, “Yes — we are one tribe — HUMAN! Our job is to bring everyone back to this singular tribe.”
Christina Economou from the UK who always has extremely profound comments, talked about how one of our biggest problems nowadays is individualism. She gave the most incredible example by saying that Tinder is really about people seeking personal gratification rather than connection.
Kay talked about how millennials have a hard time empathizing with others.
Then Zander said, “It’s hard to open your heart. This is what’s most needed right now, since we’re heading toward the same conditions as WWII.” I think I lost my concentration right about then because I couldn’t believe that a “simple” chat about compassion had led to someone making such a profound comment about the state of our world.
Then HumansFirst co-founder Mike Vacanti said, “I put my belief in people, not institutions. It is amongst us that change can happen.”
As she started wrapping up the conversation Cyndee said that perhaps we should stop saying, ‘Give me an example of a good leader’, and replace it with: ‘Give me an example of a compassionate person.’
Needless to say that after sharing these human stories, and talking about the important attributes of empathy and compassion for a whole hour, we were all feeling extremely connected and on fire actually.
And we were all pretty jealous that Cyndee and Kimberly Davis were meeting for lunch after our meeting.
Our host Kevin Monroe gave us all some “homework” to see how we can apply compassion in the workplace.
After the meeting was officially over, a bunch of us stayed on to chat some more. I brought up the subject of how we can use the power of the group to help us advance these concepts in our personal projects and that may be the theme in an upcoming hangout.
So what is the greatest takeaway from this week’s HumansFirst meeting? Our ego will always give us a million excuses not to do the right thing. As we become aware of this, we can learn to rise above it slightly, overcome any negative feelings or tendencies we may have, and replace them with positive feelings. This is how we can gradually transform all human behavior from negative to positive. It’s quite a big undertaking and we will all have to pitch in for that to happen.
