Fellow Feeling

Compassion. Have you ever received it at the moment you were desperately in need of it? Have you given it? Have you ever felt it but been at a loss for how to express it? What does compassion feel like to you? What does it look like? What does it sound like? Even in the uncertainty of how to express it, is there still a weight to it in your belly? Do you often, show (even in the simplest of ways) concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others? If you do then you are likely a compassionate person.

Compassion literally means to suffer together. One researcher defines it as “the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.” Did you hear that? Compassion is feeling motivated to relieve the pain of another person.

Oh, how I long to see more of this. To do more and to feel more compassion. Literally, our culture, our very humanity, especially on social media seems to seek the opposite. Rather than seeking to relieve someone’s pain people delight in others’ pain or seek to inflict more.

I know we may have this perception of compassion as of a touchy-feely weepy reaction from someone or to someone. It’s not. It is a glimpse of the Divine in us. It is the best part of humanity – a streak of light throughout the dark shadows of the human sense of self - selfishness, self-centeredness, self-awareness, self-confidence, self-preservation, self – We really have “self” down pat. But compassion is others-centered and not only others-centered but also revolves around another’s suffering.

There is one synonym for compassion that I love. Fellow feeling is sympathy and feeling existing between people based on shared experiences or feelings. It is a sense of joint interest. Can we find at some level a fellow feeling toward all people we encounter? Empathy? Can we pause? And listen?

I encountered compassion today. From a total stranger. A woman named Robin. I encountered her at a vulnerable moment - my vulnerable moment. And she had feelings for my suffering. She expressed encouragement and understanding. She did not embrace her sense of self, her time, her job...but rather she embraced the pain, emotion, and the problem of someone else…me. She took the time. She listened. She did not have solutions. But actually, she did. She had a solution to the human condition of pain – fellow feeling.

This is missing in much of our culture today. Self is stronger than fellow feeling. It takes practice. It takes closing our mouths and calming our minds and listening to someone else. Listen to the other. Listen to the Other, the still small Voice.

Self says:

What about me? What about my pain? You have no idea what I have been through. I, me, mine.

Fellow feeling says:

Well first, it says nothing. Simply listens. Then we may say, I’m so sorry. Words fail but if I could, I would say the ones that bring comfort. How can I help? What do you need? I have once been where you are now.

I have learned - because I have lived and suffered and lost and loved - that the most profound way to give and receive comfort and empathy is simply to give out experience. We empathize from the place of our own suffering. We comfort and express compassion from the reservoir of comfort and compassion we have received. Oh, may that reservoir be deep!

Lord let me listen to others - not in a way that is eager to get to my turn - but rather with a fellow feeling heart that reaches into the deep well of pain and suffering, and draws our waters of healing compassion. Lord, please let Your Voice be sweeter to me than my own.

2 Corinthian 1:4 “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us>’