Compassion

In the midst of violence, anger, death, grief, sadness, pain, hope, division, and unity, is it possible to find compassion? Honest, pure, unfiltered compassion. All encompassing, compassion.

At four years old I left my homeland to come here, to a country that gave me freedom to be that of my choosing. I ended up in the beautiful state of Colorado, in the middle of beauty, and in the middle of tragedy. In elementary school I watched the news, terrified, as footage of Columbine came up on every channel. I cried and fear grew deep in my core. I feared losing life the way that these innocent kids lost their lives. I feared anyone who looked like they could be the next to shoot, I feared the quiet, I feared the lonely. I hated. I blamed. I obsessed.

Years later, our channels were occupied again. September 11th, thousands of lives lost. Acts of terror, of suicide, of murder.

Then there was Virginia Tech, and then there was the theater, right back to Colorado. And there was so much in between.

I realize the motives of these situations are different, some are acts of organized crime, others are acts of individuals fueled by a different hate, a different motive. And thousands of people have lost their lives on an ordinary day, they were at school, they were at a theater, they were going to work, they were.

Now we watch Paris, a city I visited just a few months back. We watch Paris lose the lives of their innocent. We watch Paris and we search again for answers, for villains, for association. And we prepare for it to happen again. And we grow in fear, in hate, in sadness, in unity, in division. We grapple with how, we grapple with why, we blame, we don’t comprehend. We fear. We hate. We come together. We divide.

We feel compassion for the innocent whose lives were taken, we feel compassion for the survivors who are fighting for their lives, we feel compassion for the parents that lost their children, for the children that lost their parents, for the brothers, the sisters, the grandparents.

We can feel compassion for the victims, but can we bring ourselves to feel compassion for the perpetrators? Can we bring ourselves to realize that this isn’t Paris, and this isn’t Iraq, this isn’t Syria, this isn’t Colorado, and this isn’t New York. This is humanity.

Is it too radical, too far-fetched, to find compassion for someone who was once a child, who was raised by someone else, who was also once a child, to become someone who they weren’t born to be, but became? We were all once innocent, just as we are all guilty. These borders, religions, cliques, nationalities, languages, are all dividers of our creation. Just as I will never understand involvement in a religion that asks that I kill for my God, the other cannot understand my rejection of God. Just as I point the finger at a villain, the other points their finger at me. There are no innocent, there are no villains, there is no us, and there is no them.

If we can get to a point where we can feel compassion for humanity, we can get to a point where there is real unity. And maybe this is ignorance, naivety, but I would take both if it can eliminate the fear in my core, the hate in my core, the blame in my core. I choose compassion for Paris, for Iraq, for Syria, for Colorado, for the innocent that lost their lives, and for those that felt such hate, such fear, such blame in their core, that they decided to take them. I choose compassion for humanity.