Compassionately Curious

Imagine walking on a street and noticing a stranger suffering. This doesn't necessarily have to be a homeless person or someone feeling medically sick. Mere suffering, which you and I recognize due to personal experiences of knowing life. It's one of those days when multiple things go wrong or a life-obstructing issue has struck again, which never got solved in your life. Most people know this from their first thirty years of lifespan. You want to cry but you can't for some reason because whatever the issue is has happened so many times that even your tear ducts have given up on you. For some, this is generally followed by a mind-swallow kind of response in which you set aside the teary intent and try to decide what to do next. When I notice this in others, I know it's not a situation in which I am responsible, but I know the person will benefit if helped. Examples may include time management issues, symptoms of some health problem, not having children or having too many, a difficult to avoid marital situation, or not having any relationship situation whatsoever, financial stress, not being able to tackle some arduous administrative paper-work necessary for you to be able to live like a normal human being, finding a job, and more. We all know the struggling stranger. However, we may not know if and when to be compassionate in such scenarios.

In a book called Moving Toward Global Compassion, Dr. Paul Ekman identifies the proclivity toward such intent as global compassion in which a person can be in tune with suffering of all human beings and not only with their own struggles (Ekman, 2014). Compassion goes beyond simply feeling bad for another person, which is experienced as sympathy because you can feel bad without understanding another's suffering fully. Compassion has the added element of empathy marked by the ability to suffer with others along with the motivation to alleviate the suffering. For a moment, some of us may even consider this outside our usual capacity given the many problems that occupy our minds. Ironically, however, personal suffering also comes with the gift of knowing human suffering closely.

A major obstacle in generating compassionate help is when the benefactor (the person who wants to help) is limited by other emotions and civility related worldviews (e.g., being conscious of the usual or immediate social norms, not knowing if compassionate intervention will be appropriate behavior, not being competent enough to help and feeling foolish later, not being acknowledged, getting in a problem and increasing your own suffering, the help being misinterpreted as pick up line in a dating attempt and many more).

In my own limited share of introducing such conversation with strangers, mainly in the United States, I have seen anything and everything from a stern 'I'm fine, thank you,' from an older man in an elevator with a bleeding ivy arm opening to a recently released prisoner of fifteen years telling me 'I love you.'

You'll find a range of responses, and you'll never know what to expect. Not knowing this fact scares a lot of people and many often refrain from compassionate help particularly once you have had even one poor experience. In the absence of true compassion, you may even feel offended or rejected when your help is met by some strange or raw response, not in line with what you may be accustomed to in general. Similarly, it helps to consider a variety of non-materialistic ways in which you may be compassionate. You would be surprised how many homeless people benefit more by a conversation than monitory or materialistic help. Why? When you converse with people, you give them the respect of being a similar person. Is this easily followed? No. People often stop from compassionate conversations due to their utter consciousness with their own belongingness markers and how they might be categorised socially. Therefore, we try to express where we work, what city we came from, how your child is doing at school, and when you'll be getting married soon just before having a conversation with a stranger who may not be as circumstantially fortunate as you.

Examples of a few opening lines that tend to be successful, to some extent, are listed ahead.

"How did you learn to sketch so well?" (Or anything they might be working with in the moment. The idea is to begin with a compliment. Then a conversation is bound to follow.)

"I know a doctor nearby; you are sure you don't need assistance?" (This involves signs of your intentionality to actually help, beyond just expressing a civil conversational gesture).

"I had a similar situation once..." (For seamless conversation without making the person feel awkward or on the spot.)

"Simply keep a bottle of drinking water or food nearby and leave quietly." (This is when you know but you know that they don't want you to know.)

.. and many others that may be appropriate depending on the scenario.

To be compassionate, in the global sense, a great degree of openness is often required in what you'll find in return. An almost parent-like stance without the sense of superiority is what tends to work best with a sense of humor that isn't corrosive, only human in making the other person feel the same space of existence. Being emotionally present at the level of the person struggling helps learn more even if you may not get a single word out of them. The more you observe, the more you'll know what kind of direct or indirect compassionate intervention is needed. If nothing else, such behavior is likely to set a norm to be compassionately interested. You get to know people more, not to build a network for a change, only to learn what connects us truly as human beings, by the way of suffering.

How do I know the above matters? After returning to a city in California after four years, in 2017, the only person who hugged me was a homeless guy I used to greet compassionately.

References

Ekman, P. (2014). Moving toward global compassion. Paul Ekman Group.