Compassion can change the world
2020 has been extremely stressful for the entire global population. As the year is closing, we are all longing for change. We are collectively able to make the world a better place, but we cannot expect it to magically happen. We should be deliberate about it and have a plan. Compassion has to be at the heart of it.
A number of huge issues have made this year extremely difficult: the COVID crisis, of course, and its effects on physical and mental health, inequality and poverty; the rise of populism, and the related political and societal instability; the ever-increasing evidence of climate change. These extraordinary events weigh heavily on all of us and it is easy to feel disheartened.
The year is almost over. I will be celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve with family and friends in the Netherlands. I am looking forward to being back, it has been a while. We will not have a large family Christmas gathering, and I will not see my daughter who is in the US and cannot come over, which will be a bit sad. Also contrary to normal, there will be no fireworks on the streets at midnight on the 31st. I don’t mind that at all. I dislike the loud noises and how they terrify pets. Every year fireworks injure people and the Dutch government has decided that this time hospitals dealing with COVID should not have the extra burden. It is ironic that the pagan, symbolic fireworks that should drive out bad things and bring positive change in dark days, are not taking place when, if you believe in magic, we need them most.
Like everyone else, I am longing for a better 2021. I am well aware that fireworks nor any amount of magical thinking will make that happen overnight. If we want a better future we will need to be deliberate and have a plan. But I am hopeful and optimistic. If we use what we have learnt in this crisis year and enable compassion to guide us, we should be able to create widespread and meaningful global change. Compassion can be defined as ‘the ability to be moved by suffering and experiencing the motivation to help alleviate and prevent it’. We have to become better at using compassion to reduce global suffering.
“If we want to have happier workplaces we have to move away from institutional egocentrism, through institutional compassion, to community building and collaboration.”
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to creating more happiness at a global scale is that we have not figured out how to be happy as individuals. We keep, erroneously, thinking that we will get there through gaining more for ourselves. That myth has to be busted if we want to have a real chance at reducing pain and enhancing wellbeing for all of us.
The basic problem is that as humans we are perpetually — consciously or subconsciously — convinced that our own happiness is right around the corner, and will be found as soon as we have more or different things, and achieve more or different individual goals. This mindset leads to a constant state of craving for what is not there. In that state, we are less likely to be aware of, let alone grateful for, what we do have. That makes us angry, disgruntled and depressed, constantly feeling that we are lacking something, that we are not good enough, or not trying hard enough. In that state, it is hard for us to feel compassion for others. In fact we are more likely to see them as obstacles to what we need to be fulfilled, which makes us adversarial or withdrawn, instead of kind and open with others. For too many of us, even a lifetime of trying to be happy and not getting there, is not enough to make us realise the fallacy of our thinking.
This state of being can be found not just in individuals, but also in institutions, such as universities, or in entire communities. To stay close to home, it drives university communities to feel that if we just have more money or prestige, we would be more successful and happy. It stops us from focusing on the needs of the wider local or global community, and from working together with others who cannot give us what we desire for our institutional status. If we want to have happier workplaces we have to move away from institutional egocentrism, through institutional compassion, to community building and collaboration.
“What we need is an ambitious individual and collective change programme, a post COVID-reset, if you wish.”
As with all behavioural change, it has to start with self-awareness, in this case with an understanding of our own pain, and of the futility of our normal, but ineffective ways of trying to get rid of it. A term that is more and more used for seeing our own habitual patterns, understanding them and moving on, is self-compassion. We need self-compassion to see why we are being so ego-driven and to be gentle and forgiving with ourselves. This will lead us to open up and become more compassionate to others. It is the only sustainable way to our own happiness. Crucially, it is also the only sustainable way to happiness for the larger global community.
What we need is an ambitious individual and collective change programme, a post COVID-reset, if you wish. As humans and as communities we need each other. We need to apply individual and institutional compassion. That is a starting point for large social and societal movements towards, literally, a better world. I believe this shift can happen now. The amount of global suffering is huge. Also, the awareness of the limitations of our focus on individual gain is increasing. A crisis can compel individuals to be more open to meaningful change and different life goals. If it happens at many levels, not just in individuals, but also in institutions, in communities, and in the systems we have put in place, the synergy can be enormous.
Universities can and should be at the forefront of this new way of thinking and acting. We are well positioned to lead by example and to start shifting the dial in the direction of institutional compassion. We are communities full of people who are inherently driven by the wish to contribute to a better world. Our outputs are not financial; our main product is knowledge; we teach large groups of people to be the next, more enlightened and considerate generation of global citizens; and local community work and global collaboration is at the heart of the majority of what we do. We should create processes in our universities that enable us to be compassionate institutions. We need to help the caring people in them to be even more effective; we need to encourage teamwork and inclusion in our research, our teaching and our societal impact; we need to disincentivise egocentric behaviours; and we need to enable structures in which we do not primarily work as isolated individuals, but as groups that care for each other and for our communities.
“We cannot expect to reach happiness if we continue as individuals, as institutions and as communities with our usual, ineffective approaches.”
I know as a university leader I need to work with conviction on behaving in the way I hope and expect everybody else to do. To not be driven by prestige and power, to not feel like I need to be better than others, to not let my own egotistical needs get in the way of my compassion and my humanity. It is hard work and it never stops. But if I get it right and if I manage to correct myself every time I slip, it makes me so much happier and more fulfilled. And I will be better placed to enable my university community to focus on what truly matters, in research, in teaching and in helping the society around us.
In the middle of the awfulness of a crisis, we have a collective duty to find the lessons that can prepare us for creating a better future. The COVID pandemic has brought us a lot of human pain and we must never forget that it is a true human tragedy. But if we pay careful attention, we will see how it can motivate us to change. It has shown us the power of altruistic research collaboration; it has shown us the power of caring in local communities; it has shown us the power of the empathy in health care providers who have gone above and beyond. In short: it has shown us the world-changing power of human compassion.
We cannot expect to reach happiness if we continue as individuals, as institutions and as communities with our usual, ineffective approaches. We cannot expect that magical thinking or fireworks will bring us what we want on 1 January. We can only reach large-scale global change if we consciously define new strategies and use our compassion to inspire new behaviours.
Let’s harness our collective suffering for a better 2021 and beyond. Let’s use it to decide that it is time to change to a world where we are collaborative and caring for each other, so we all have a shot at happiness and peace. Let’s use it to start change in a wise, kind and compassionate way, in ourselves, but also in our communities and workplaces. Let’s be forgiving of the past but determined about the future. And most of all: let’s do it together.
