The term “compassion” — typically reserved for the saintly or the sappy — has fallen out of touch with reality. At a special TEDPrize@UN, journalist Krista Tippett deconstructs the meaning of compassion through several moving stories and proposes a new, more attainable definition for the word.
Reconnecting with Compassion
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To have compassion is to feel a particular sensitivity to the suffering of others and feel the desire to alleviate it concretely.
If we were all more compassionate with others, the quality of human relationships would make a great leap. Two clarifications.
The first: first of all, we must be able to be self-compassionate, that is, to try this attitude already towards ourselves.
The second: compassion is not an attitude to be reserved only for the great problems of human life, from wars to serious diseases, from natural disasters to world hunger and so on.Compassion is fine, indeed it works even better, in the little things and obstacles of every day.