compassion, huruma n.
– sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it
It is not that I must sustain my compassion. It is that my compassion sustains me.
I often give myself mantras during different periods of my life when I need something particular to give me strength, give me guidance, give me remembrance of the person I intend and am growing to be. Throughout my time in Senegal, my mantra was this: feel it all, let it be. At the turn of the new year, as I faced my final, and particularly challenging, two months in Senegal and a year of hard work, discovery, and learning, my mantra was this: think toward thankfulness, move toward mindfulness.
My mantra for my time in Kenya is this: walk not with fear, but with compassion.
It is not that I must sustain my compassion. It is that my compassion sustains me.
On Wednesday of last week, I woke at 6:30, was out the door by 7:45, at the hospital by 8, conducting an interview by 8:15, at a women’s shelter by 9:15, at a children’s home by 10:30, at another by 12:00, and back at the hospital by 12:45. This was my 17th straight day of working in the hospital and this day and the day before I was adding to my normal busy-ness by hosting two visitors from the Umoja Project. And so I was tired.
I sat outside and had my small lunch while Moses ate next to me and when he was finished, sat down on the floor, surrounded by legos and blocks, to play with him. And I was tired.
As the children from the wards began to filter into the center after their lunch, I watched the children five years and under coming toward me to play and I thought: maybe I’m too tired for this today, maybe I’m not taking care of myself right now, maybe this is the burning out part, maybe I’m not able to be a presence of good right now.
One of the questions I’ve been asking when conducting interviews for my senior thesis research is this: How do you define compassion, and what do you think of the idea of ‘compassion as vocation’?
The answers have been beautiful.
In the interview that morning, the child life worker discussed how she sees compassion wane in healthcare professionals who, after watching so many die preventable deaths, die suffering without adequate resources, die regardless of the work the doctor has done, become discouraged and disheartened and dispassionate and stop seeing the patient as a patient, stop seeing the human as a human, stop seeing with compassion.
Another question I ask is how the care providers sustain themselves while doing this challenging, exhausting, work as, with compassion, they give so much of themselves to these children each day.
And so I’m sitting there, and I’m seeing these children come toward me, hoping and expecting and needing me to give them a part of my self, my heart, my joy, my compassion and I’m tired and I’m wondering if I’m not sustaining myself. I’m wondering if I have become like these healthcare professionals with waning compassion, not having taken care of my heart, not having given myself time to heal, time to rebuild my smile and my compassion.
But then the children are giggling and calling me by my name and visibly putting aside their sadness and fear from the wards and I am sharing time and play and love with children filled with cancer, children with central lines placed in their feet, children abused and neglected, children with burns and wounds and coughs and laughter and joy and sincerity and curiosity.
I look around at the children, see Moses sitting beside me stacking blocks in color-coded order and chattering to me as if over the past two weeks he has been a deflated balloon who has slowly had air blown back into him, allowing him to inflate and rise once more, hear those melodious giggles all around me, watch their at-first shy play transform to all-teeth-showing grins, and I am renewed of energy, I feel myself being taken care of, I realize the children are creating my presence of good, they are rebuilding my smile, sustaining my compassion.
I recognized this: it is not that I must sustain my compassion. It is that my compassion sustains me.
I see these children around me, I see their hurt, I see how long they stay in the hospital, I see how few leave completely heal and whole, I see how fragile their lives are, I see that their lives may end. And I love them. Oh, how I love them. Oh, how I want to share that time and play and love with them.
In one interview, a caregiver defined compassion in her work as wanting, deep down inside and with so much of your being, to hold these children, even through the hardest, scariest, and most painful moments, to do all you can to take a piece of their suffering away and to offer them even the smallest pieces of joy.
Later that evening, I read a Buddhist meditation on staying, on living, on loving through places of fear, places of challenge, places of uncertainty. I read these words from from Pema Chödrin:
“Becoming more intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”
It is not that I must sustain my compassion. It is that my compassion sustains me.
callie daniels-howell 