Compassion Doesn’t Mean We Like Someone

Compassion is understanding someone, rather than liking them or enjoying their company. It is recognising another’s suffering and having a benevolent wish for their relief, regardless of how we feel about their personality or actions. This is why compassion is challenging – it’s not something wet. 🙂 Wet: overly sentimental

We can acknowledge inherent human value without pretending that flaws don’t exist – and we have to do the same for our self as well.

Compassion doesn’t mean that we allow someone to confuse the atmosphere. Compassion involves understanding the wounds that might drive a person’s exaggerated behaviour. This understanding doesn’t excuse them, but it allows us to respond with a calm heart rather than reactive anger.

We can be detached with love, which means removing ourself from a person’s destructive ways while still caring about their well-being.

Sometimes the most compassionate act is forceful action to stop harmful behaviour and, in doing so, setting a boundary. This protects our own sanctuary while still recognising the other person as an equal in human value. 

Ultimately, compassion is a perspective that allows us to see beyond a person’s surface-level personality or mistakes to the shared human experience underneath.