Is it Compassion or Altruism?

The Compassion Experience

---

It's a Sunday morning. The sun is just pushing its way up above leaf-filled trees. My fingers are sore and sweaty. A cool-for-late-June-in-Minnesota breeze kisses my face (thank you, wind!). 

I've finished mowing my lawn. Inside, a fresh glass of ice-tea, a good book, and a comfy chair awaits. But before I head indoors, I take my mower and weed-wacker next door. I mow the lawn and start clearing the weeds from the stairway of my neighbors’ house. Lewis and Sarah are in their eighties, and I think to myself, Why should they have to come out here and do this when I'm already here, sweating and in a groove? 

Photo by Azlan Baharudin on Unsplash

I've been shoveling their walkways and mowing their lawn for nearly a decade. On this day, their son arrived to visit his parents, and he stopped to thank me for my compassion toward his parents.

I was puzzled. Sure, I was helpful and felt good about myself for living as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh explained it:

“My actions are my only true belongings.”

But was I expressing compassion? I'd always thought of compassion as putting empathy into action.

When I finally came inside, I consulted Merriam-Webster: Compassion. Noun – the feeling of wanting to help the sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.

Hmm, ok, yeah. I guess what I did was compassionate. But I wanted more information. So I turned to social media and polled my friends:

How do you define compassion?

These concepts of compassion resonated with me. But as a health journalist, I couldn't help but explore what the experts say. So, I dug into the data on pro-social behaviors like compassion, and it turned out that my friends were on to something.

Compassion "seems to refer to an amalgam of unquestionably good qualities—kindness, mercy, tenderness, benevolence, understanding, empathy, sympathy, and fellow-feeling, along with an active impulse to help other living creatures, human or animal, in distress," writes Kristen Neff, Ph.D., author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself,

But it turns out that a standardized definition of compassion has stumped researchers, too.

In an attempt to reach a consensus, researchers from the Universities of Sussex and Oxford set out to define compassion along with ways to measure it.

Why did it matter? "Without an agreed definition and adequate measures, we cannot study compassion, measure compassion or evaluate whether interventions designed to enhance compassion are effective," the authors write.

The scientists reviewed a raft of compassion research, dictionaries, and Buddhist texts, among others, to create a consensus definition. They teased out five elements of compassion that set it apart from related constructs like empathy and altruism.

They are:

• Sensitivity to or the recognition of suffering

• Understanding that suffering is a universal part of the human experience

• Feeling empathy for the suffering of others and connecting with their distress

• Distress tolerance or being open and accepting of the person suffering

• Motivation to alleviate the suffering

Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash

So, under this definition, is mowing my neighbor's lawn an act of compassion?

It's definitely an act of altruism — or taking action to promote someone else's welfare. Acting altruistically can be motivated by compassion, but it isn't always. Mowing my aging neighbor's lawn is kind, and I am inspired to protect them from being hot and possibly straining or injuring themselves. In this case, my neighbors weren't suffering. My motivation was to alleviate their risk of suffering.

For my lawn mowing to be considered an act of compassion, I'd have to empathize with someone else's situation. I'd look at what they're experiencing without judgment and imagine how I'd feel if I were in that situation. I'd then act to change the situation or help ease the person's pain.

But the more I think about it, I do empathize with Lewis and Sarah. I remember how challenging it was to do even basic things after breaking my wrist a few years ago. I also often put myself in their shoes and wonder how I'd feel if I were 80-years-old and faced with having to push my lawn mower on the days my bones ached. I'd probably be grateful if someone helped me out by doing it for me.

Still, my action still doesn't seem quite to fit the definition outlined by the researchers.

However, I've learned something important from this endeavor.

It’s that compassion seems like one of the beautiful parts of life that defy description. It's one of those profound things you feel when you experience it.

---

---