Voices of the Children
In my earliest memories I remember a women walking up to my mother and me in a park, asking my mother to hold her baby and then we did the most amazing thing- she ran away. I learned about the depths of compassion in the love I felt for this abandoned baby. I was too little to know what I felt was called compassion, but as I grew older I found the same feeling echoed in all my interactions. I have felt overwhelming compassion for classmates as their parents divorced. I feel an overwhelming desire to do more every time I serve food at the holes shelter, play bingo at the elder care center, and talk with the veterans. Last year I met a refugee family from Uzbekistan. They came here under terrible strife and only the clothes on their backs. When I listen to their stories I can understand despite the language barrier. I can understand because I have a strong desire to understand others, and empathy and compassion live in my heart.
My great grandfather lost his wallet in the part once. We looked for it, but it didn’t turn up. My grandfather never got upset, and when we called off the search, he put his harm around me saying, “I hope whoever finds it needs it more than I do.” I learned much from my great grandfather. I have friend to emulate his kindness. I try to learn everything I can about the world. I try to understand things that are hard for me to understand: politics, hunger, terrorism, hatred, AIDS, genocide, poverty, and violence. What is our world so plagued with these things? Why does man hate man? The answer is complex and simple.
I have a lot of freckles. I have been teased. I have felt anger well up in me, but others have offered me compassion, defended me, befriended me, and restored me to myself. A little compassion can go along way. Is it too simple to say that if we could all understand because we wanted to, and if we allowed our compassion to guide us, we would find the way? Is it too simple to say that empathy and compassion for our fellow man could put an end to things I don’t understand? Maybe it’s too simple an answer, or maybe we just make it too hard.
Here is where my own compassion has left me wondering. Because of the great love and compassion I have been shown in my life from my family, friends, and even strangers, I have become compassionate. Perhaps my compassion will spawn the same in those it goes out to. Therein lies the hope, a hope for a compassionate future. Can I make a difference? Will a little difference matter? I have to believe for the baby left sitting in my mothers charge in the park all those years ago- it did matter. Other’s compassion has matter to me in times of need. I will continue to volunteer throughout my community; I will be a friend to the friendless at school, and spread the compassion that I feel. I hope compassion will spread, I hope others will understand, and that someday the world will make more sense.