This is Water: Practicing Intentional Compassion

Posted by DJL on May 10, 2013 in Good! | 4 comments

Sooner or later you make a choice.

Do you think you’re the center of the world, or can you give those around you the benefit of the doubt, imagine sympathetically the challenges they may face, and emphasize and identify with them rather than see them as opponents or obstacles?

I know that sounds like an easy choice, but as David Foster Wallace says, we are faced with this choice on numerous occasion nearly every day of our lives, and all too often we settle for the default setting where we assume our challenges are greater than those faced by others, our frustrations more valid and vexing, our excuses more understandable, our priorities more important and so on and so on until, suddenly, we really have moved ourselves to the center of our operative universe.

The antidote to the default? To pay attention, to be aware, to notice those around us and to exercise our freedom to choose compassion with those nearby rather than the isolation of putting our goals and concerns first.

This is the season of commencement addresses, and you’ll have a hard time finding a more creative, more humane, or more useful one than the address Wallace made to the graduating class of Kenyon College in 2005, three years before his untimely death by suicide. The following nine-minute video accompanies and illustrates excerpts of Wallace’s address, which might be summarized as an invitation to discover abundant life by practicing the discipline of what I would call “intentional compassion”; that is, the act of seeing those around you as fellow children of God worthy of respect, honor, and love.

Notes: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
2) If you want to hear his entire address, you can find it at Open Culture.
3) Thanks to Sharon for pointing me to this!