by Ryan Meyers

Created on: March 18, 2009

Compassion is an essential tool for the development of all humans. It creates a bond that brings us away or out of self and unites us as one.

Without compassion we are unable to refrain from our reactive thoughts that are sometimes harmful in nature.

Showing compassion to children helps build a bond that is stronger than self. It fuses families together as one being for the whole feels for the part and the part feels for the whole.

When compassion is used in parenting, children are more accepting to parenting mistakes and they too understand that being perfect is not an attainable reality.

I have made many mistakes and lost my patience many times but I always fess up afterward and in the least I am creating compassionate understanding for me through my children. They know that I am trying my best and I do a great job but I too am susceptible to pressure and sometimes I make mistakes.

My children respond very positively when I explain to them how I feel inside. They learn to develop compassion for me and in turn they put less pressure on themselves to be perfect.

I know they have developed compassion because they sense when my wife and I need help with the babies and they are very kind and tender to them when they do help.

Compassion is definitely a huge reason for our heightened survival. It helps us identify ourselves through the people around us. It is why we die for freedom. We are not dying for ourselves we are dying for the millions of people who will feel great joy in their lives because they will have the amazing feelings we've felt or feel as free individuals.

All religion was developed because of compassion. When compassion is absent in a harsh environment we need to understand why it is so. Once we are taught compassion we cannot comprehend life without it so we develop rules and regulations that demand it. Too bad these rules sometimes strip us of compassion and sometimes these rules bend our understanding of what it is and who does and doesn't deserve it.

How about love? Arguably the most important feeling in our lives, love does not exist without compassion. If you can't understand how your partner feels or will feel you can not treat him/her in a way that promotes more love or more growth.

We even have compassion for people who do unspeakable acts. A child grows up in the ghetto and witnesses multiple loved ones die through violence. He/she witnesses poverty that forces incredible strain on his/her mother's psyche and grows up to be a hard nosed criminal that eventually murders someone while robbing them.

Does this person deserve compassion? You may not find compassion for this person but in order for us as humans to understand "why" we find that we too may have made the same choices if we grew up in the same environment.

What was the missing element in this child's development? Compassion! There was no compassion for the (good) people dying around them or for their parent/s who were struggling just to survive so life is not compassionate to this person and therefore compassion is not equated into their action creating a self loathing human without the capacity to think beyond self and since even self deserves no compassion what do we (society) deserve? Nothing!

That doesn't mean we should make excuses for him but it certainly means we have to find a way to make life better for these people so they have the same chances we do of becoming happy.

We are all born innocent or at least we are after we are baptized for some of you out there but the point is that our survival owes great homage to compassion for social beings can not relate if they are totally absorbed in self.

Compassion forces us to "dream up" and create better conditions so we all survive infinitely.

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