When I was in the third grade a new girl came into my class. This was extremely uncommon in a class with a total of 72 students in the entire grade. Quickly, we became best friends. We did everything under the sun together. We were there for each other through everything from divorce, to boy trouble, to helping one another cope with the embarrassing thing we did first period. However, when we both turned 17, I noticed a change in dynamic, and a change within my friend. I could tell there was something wrong immediately, I mean we essentially grew up together, it’s easy to spot when she wasn’t feeling herself. One day, she finally had the courage to open up to me about what was going on. Like many people, my friend had been diagnosed with a mental illness – something I had no clue about, no understanding of, and no way to help her through something like this.
Like most, it took me a mistake, or a bad experience, to find the ethical value I now hold close. The story of me and my best friend came to an end after 13 years of friendship because I didn’t have compassion for her situation – maybe because I didn’t understand it, or maybe in the fun and adventure of my senior year of highschool, I just didn’t want to deal with it. With that being said, I feel my situation relates to many others.
In the fast paced world that is today, it is easy to lose sight of the compassion we should hold for one another. Whether its a stranger suffering from a tragedy, your grandma who is in poor health, or your best friend who is struggling to get out of bed everyday. Trying to understand someone’s situation and having sympathy for them can literally change their lives. Just having someone to talk to for five minutes or five hours can change both of you. “The Power of Compassion”, written on the Meadow Blog, is an article describing how compassion embraces the diversity amongst us all. The author writes, “We can create a meaningful difference in the world simply by performing one simple act of compassion after another.”
Compassion allows us to put ourselves in each others shoes and instead of walking in them alone, we walk in them together. I let my best friend walk alone in her shoes and that is something I will never do again. Like all ethical principles, it is something that can better not only ourselves, but the entire world around us.
At the end of the day, if we don’t have compassion for one another, we don’t have anything.
Website: http://www.meadowsoklahoma.com/_blog/The_Meadows_Blog/post/the-power-of-compassion/