In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November. The name of the holiday implies that we celebrate with gratitude for all of our blessings and everything that we are thankful for. There are many meditations and writings on and about gratitude. I have written a couple myself. This year I would like to do something a little different. I am pondering the emotion compassion and I am examining how compassion and gratitude are interlinked.
In the 1980’s Eddie Murphy was in a film called “The Golden Child.” Eddie Murphy’s character was a type of private investigator that finds lost children. His current case looking for a lost girl intersected with a case of a missing Tibetan boy. When meeting with the people looking for the little boy, they explain to Eddie Murphy’s character that this child is special, if he is killed all humanity would suffer. One character at this point laments that the last golden child, the bringer of compassion was killed and it was a great loss to all mankind. The film is fun, adventurous and interesting. It does address some serious topics, child abductions and death. If you haven’t seen it and are looking for something fun to watch, this is a good movie. The thing that I remembered most about the film was the discussion about losing the child, who was bringing compassion.
According to Webster Dictionary the word compassion is a noun meaning “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress or suffering with a desire to alleviate it.” Compassion is the ability to feel the pain or hurt that others are feeling. This can be the pain of an individual, feeling sadness of losing a loved one or the pain of an illness. It can be the pain of a group of people, feeling the devastation of a community that has been hit by forest fires. Compassion goes one step further than just feeling or sympathizing. Compassion asks that we address the need or wrong.
Why do we need compassion? Without compassion humanity wouldn’t care about what happens to other people. For people that we know or unknow individuals half a planet away, compassion is what gives us the drive to take care of and help others.
Compassion goes hand in hand with gratitude. Compassion gives gratitude a place to put ones blessings and gifts.
A miser feels gratitude for his money, but without compassion for others, he hordes wealth and allows greed to take over. Compassion can convict the heart of the miser and enable him to share his wealth with others. Charles Dickens wrote the ultimate example of this in his novel “A Christmas Carol.”
I hope that you, dear reader, will take a moment and consider compassion and gratitude. Not just because of the Thanksgiving holiday but because of the role that gratitude and compassion play in your life. What are you grateful for? How are you compassionate with others?
May your Thanksgiving be full of blessings and your heart full of compassion.
Cats Out of the Box 