Compassion Builds Community
Phil Larson
Coaching for regular folks. Community and Business Activist, Team and Network Development, Community Pastor
Compassion Builds Community
Compassion is a quantifiable component of character and community.? It is the endgame value that starts with sympathy.? Sympathy, Empathy, and Compathy form the involvement chain.? We are more familiar with compassion versus compathy, so let’s use the most familiar term.
Sympathy means I see your situation and grasp a bit of what it means to you. None of us can fully relate to the experience of another even in a comparable situation, but we can sympathize.
Empathy means I feel the emotions you are feeling in your situation.? Again, each person owns their own feelings in a situation, but I relate emotionally as best I can.
Compathy or Compassion means I so relate to you in your situation that I am motivated to action to do something to alleviate any suffering you might be experiencing.? Compassion is active.? Compassion builds community through action that addresses the deep pains and gritty problems in our communities with a focus on resolution.
Don’t let these be confused with pity.? Pity sparks a huge amount of benevolence in our communities.? However, those actions alleviate a simple symptom of an issue.? Pity gives a loaf of bread to a hungry person, which quiets the stomach, but does little to help beyond an hour or two.? Compassion develops a chain of help that provides fresh fruit and vegetables and storable foodstuffs and proteins for a family to put meals on their table.? Compassion finds a way to provide economical housing in underserved areas so families can take their small wage jobs and have a better quality of life.? Compassion develops community education that advances solid social skills and conflict resolution and family building to shift impact of generational dysfunction in relationships. Compassion brings solutions involving education and jobs and social entertainment as close to the people lacking as possible.
Don’t let these be confused with victimization.? In our desire to shift the situation to good, we get a bit overzealous defending our position by making victims of others.? Victimization becomes a form of blame shifting.? It seeks to find a villain, a hero, and a victim.? This scenario can rarely produce a just or equitable outcome.? Compassion looks to find a solution, not a victim or a villain. Compassion doesn’t care to be seen as a hero but looks to get a root cause resolution that will last.
Five ways compassion makes a difference. In these ways, compassionate community action excels.
1.?????? Compassion involves the struggling in solutions
2.?????? Compassion works on long term growth
3.?????? Compassion refuses to give up when obstacles interfere
4.?????? Compassion is creative and innovative
5.?????? Compassion looks for sustainable answers
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Compassion involves the struggling in the solution.?
Someone is struggling to live a better life forward.? Some situation or obstacle gets in their way.? It might be a lack of knowledge or access to resources or a personal disability or even a community dysfunction of thought like racism.? But the one to help is the struggler.? Compassion listens to the struggler before developing solutions.? It doesn’t seek to make the struggler conform to the mindset or culture of the compassionate.? It seeks to understand from the view of the one fighting the battle.?? Because compassion develops from sympathy and empathy it is tuned to the struggler.
Compassion works on long term growth
Any sticky situation has taken a long time to develop.? At SOLUM we are working on effective community education in rural communities for folks on probation and parole.? These folks need an endgame.? They need a way to get to the end of the sentence successfully and not return or recidivate.? That takes long term growth.? That takes a shift in thought that produces a shift in behaviors and habits that continue from a solid life foundation.? It isn’t easy.? Okay. But it is doable.
Compassion refuses to give up with situations and obstacles interfere
Compassion is positive.? Positivity recognizes that obstacles will arise and makes accommodation to face them.? A wicked problem is a problem that changes nature every time you apply a novel approach.? Like the old game of whack-a-mole, you hit one problem on the head and two more pop up.? Compassion does not quit the game.? It keeps going after the strongest solutions realizing it cannot win every step and ever struggle and every second.
Compassion is creative and innovative
The many solutions folks are finding in tiny homes and sustainable small housing inspires. An innovative approach crops up every month.? None are permanent solutions, but the innovation results in increased people being housed in a private and dignified manner.? That is compassion in action.? The innovation will continue to build a pattern that becomes a stronger and stronger and more viable solution than what we do today for the homeless.
Compassion looks for sustainable solutions
This is not easy.? Culture morphs.? Economies shift.? While we are being compassionate, we want to provide a solution that is sustainable.? It has a chance at funding and eventually self-sustainability.? That may not be the case up front, but it can get there.? I’ve worked in a few situations of outreach that eventually disappeared. That’s okay. Sometimes our solutions are temporary and help for a season, not forever.?? But sustainable solutions just keep providing.
In our work among rural probation and parole, we find that most folks who have resource to help of time, talent, and treasure, struggle with the necessary compassion to act.? Compassion moves time, talent, and treasure to the point of need.? Pity can move a dollar in a moment but does not provide a sustainable situation.? Pity wears out. Victimization and heroism expire motivation quickly. Compassion keeps going.? But it needs sustainable solutions.
Summary: I pray you get compassionately involved in life change in your community.? There are plenty of opportunities.? What sparks your sympathy, empathy, and compassion?? Study the subject.? Find partners who see and have compassion.? Join them in the journey.? Our journey at SOLUM has few ways you can get involved listed below.?
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More reading on Compassion
The benefits of compassion for the person being actively compassionate.
Compassion and Psychology (mind, will, emotion) that leads to productive action
“As such, compassion is not an automatic response to another’s plight; it is a response that occurs only when the situation is perceived as serious, unjust and relatable. It requires a certain level of awareness, concern and empathy.”
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Join the journey to provide an integrated, growth, persistent, innovative, sustainable solution to changing the experience of crime to enabling a life mission of a better life forward in rural United States.
SOLUM Community Transformation Intiiative is an IRS authorized 501C3 EIN 11-3664238 charitable organization.
When an individual engages with personal responsibility, moral integrity, and community accountability they find solid life foundations, safe and healthy relationships, and build generations of greatness.? It happens.? It works.?
4 million folks live every day under community incarceration of probation and parole.
1 million of those live in rural communities with little or no access to life change resources.
100,000 of those are ready at any given time to make the changes necessary to engage a life mission of a better life forward.
When one person changes, they impact an average of 75 other folks living in the same mindset in which they started.? The community grows more stable, secure, and solid.
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Phil, thethinkdirector? [email protected]? 405.494.0637