Getting Past Appearances

Many of us believe that we are compassionate people. But are we really? Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary formally defines “compassion” as the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” In our daily lives, some people think of compassion as “love in action.” Many religions encourage us to strive to be compassionate people and admonish us to “love our neighbor.”

Summarizing these definitions, it would appear that compassion could be defined as “love in action for our neighbor in distress with a desire to alleviate it.” So, whether we are compassionate people depends upon our own attitudes and desires to help. I believe that we are born with compassion; the quality of compassion is already within ourselves from birth — we need only to find and awaken our compassion. As we live our lives we can choose to nurture and expand this quality.

But, what about the “neighbors” for whom we have compassion? Do our neighbors have any role in our developing or exercising our compassion? Maybe... Maybe, not. However, what our neighbors do, how they appear and what we expect from them may influence how easy it is for us to exercise and develop our compassion.

The homeless have suffered the loss of what most of us consider our human basic needs — they have lost their personal shelter, their expectation of having food on a regular basis and most of their clothing. Whether homeless people are sheltered or unsheltered, they have, for whatever length of time, lost their personal experiences of having their own homes. When people lose their experiences of having their own homes, they may also lose their hope for having their own homes again.

Even their feelings of self-worth may be negatively affected by the trauma they experience as a result of their homelessness. An attitude might develop that says, “No matter what you say or how you treat me, I know that I’m at the bottom of the food chain.”

As with any of our responses to traumatic events, the hopefulness experienced by homeless people by virtue of becoming homeless may be expressed physically, mentally, and emotionally. The results of the traumatic event of becoming homeless may also be expressed by some homeless people through the misuse of substances. In addition, because we as a society have provided few public bathrooms, showers and even fewer public laundries, many homeless people may not have access to facilities where they can perform acts of basic hygiene. The results are obvious — homeless people often appear disheveled.

We often expect homeless people to “pick themselves up by their own bootstraps” and become housed again. Because many homeless people are and remain unhoused, our expectations of them to become housed, among other things, are not met. It is basic human nature that when people do not meet our expectations of them, we may become disappointed and resentful. Without greater understanding of ourselves and others, we are unlikely to extend compassion to those whom we feel have failed to live up to our own expectations, who have disappointed us or to whom we feel resentful. We may feel disappointed or resentful of them because they have failed to live up to our unreasonable expectations.

It is because of what homeless people do, how they appear and what we expect from them, that we may find it challenging to have compassion for them. However, “our neighbors” includes everyone. Therefore, I believe that the test of true compassion is whether we can care for all of our neighbors, including our homeless neighbors whom we may find the most challenging to help.