“Our acts of compassion uplift others and make them happy. We may not know it, but by uplifting others we are also helping ourselves.” – Emma Seppala

Chain Reaction

I was sitting in her kitchen. She was standing and talking. When suddenly, her breath became halted.

“He’s just dealing with his demons,” she said while explaining why her husband, of more than twenty years, was away from their family. “I know he’ll figure it out. He’s back where we went to high school and is visiting as many people as he can. He was supposed to come back a week ago. Now I don’t know when he’ll be coming back.”

She took one very deep breath and then she shut her eyes, squeezing them, in their shut position, in an effort to stop the inevitable tears. He breath halted two or three more times as she continued to squeeze her eyes shut.

“It’s just that; he’s the love of my life,” she blurted, as if a hiccup.

Then, she turned tightly and walked out of the room. She had lost control of her the once held-back-tears. I simply watched, listened, waited and thought about what I’d been learning.

I contemplation what Emma Seppala has been teaching me about how compassion is often confused with empathy. Because it seemed to fit in this circumstance. Dr. Seppala says that empathy is the process related to experiencing another person’s feelings. It’s like automatically mirroring another person’s emotion, yet that was not what I saw as my friend teared up at the thought of her husband’s sadness, because It’s not identical to compassion. 

Compassion often happens as you notice another person’s suffering and it involves a genuine desire to help alleviate that suffering. That’s what my friend was experiencing, as demonstrated by her halted breath and hiccup-laden-tears. She wanted to help her loved one in some way. And, this desire walked back into the kitchen with her seconds later.

“He’ll work it all out. It will just take him some time. But, I know he’ll get there. He’s really a good person,” she explained.

Her kindness likely reminds you of how one act of goodness has the ability to produce more generosity in a chain reaction of goodness. You may have seen a news report about how such a chain reaction occurred after someone paid for the diners who come after them at a restaurant, or for drivers behind them at a tollbooth. It’s natural for people to keep generous behavior going. Acts of compassion uplift others and make the giver happy as well. And, my friend was immediately uplifted because of the compassion she was offering to her husband. 

“You may not know it, but by uplifting others we are also helping ourselves,” Dr. Seppala explains. Happiness spreads! if the people around you are happy, you become happier.

I was still sitting on a chair in my friend’s kitchen. She walked back toward me. Her breathing had changed. It had become soft, calm and healing, because of her expressed compassion.

Let the chain reaction of goodness begin!