What is Compassion?

What is compassion?

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, owner and chief instructor here at the studio. I have two master’s degrees in education, and we’ve developed this curriculum to best meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four, and our oldest student who’s 85.

And this month, we are talking about compassion.

Defining compassion for our younger kids is kind of an interesting process, because they’re paying attention to how they feel as well as how their friends feel, but they’re not quite sure how to act on it, other than, “I’ll give them a hug.” That’s basically what the younger kid answer is, typically. And so, when we’re teaching compassion to younger kids, we’re talking about paying attention to their body language, paying attention to their facial expressions, and recognizing that when they’re upset, when they’re angry, when they’re frustrated, when they’ve got these big emotions, compassion is you wanting to help them, wanting to make them feel better. And when kids are younger, their bag of tricks is literally, “I’ll give them a hug and offer them my toy.”

And so, as we go through this month of compassion, we’re going to talk about what other things could we do. We see somebody who’s upset over something, could we just be a sympathetic ear? Would that help them feel better? For our older kids, could we write them a note? Could we send them a letter? Could we send them a quick text? Because they looked like they were frustrated as they were walking away, and you just want to make them smile. Find a meme that’ll make them laugh.

Finding other ways to show compassion, to show that we want to make it better, to show that we see that they’re suffering, that they’re upset, that they’re really sad about something, and that we can understand that emotion and we want to try to make it so that it’s not as much of a burden. Because we all feel very similar emotions to each other. We might not understand the exact circumstance somebody is going through, but we can understand what it feels like to be frustrated or upset or angry or sad. We can understand the feelings, we just might not fully grasp the situation that they’re going through.

Another thing that we can talk about when it comes to compassion is people we don’t know, homeless people, people we just don’t know at all that might be having difficulties getting food on their table or things like that. How do we take care of those people? How do we show compassion to those groups of people? And compassion is an idea of kindness and empathy and action, and it’s all rolled into one. It’s all rolled into this need to help, to take care of, to lift somebody up. And it’s growing our menu of actions that we can take.

As we get older, it’s no longer a hug or sharing. It’s like I said earlier, listening, sending them a funny joke, gathering up things that don’t fit us anymore and making donations. It’s paying attention and practicing our awareness. And as we’re going through things, what could we do along the way to help somebody around us? And it’s all of that recognition that goes into what compassion is. For our younger kids, they don’t always know that you can feel two emotions at once. So it’s teaching them that you can be excited and scared over the same process. And then, how do you show compassion for somebody who is both excited and scared? Because one is a positive emotion and one could be a negative emotion, so how do you help that person out? That’s also part of compassion.

So as we go through this month, we’re going to talk about how we show compassion to others. We’re going to talk about how we show compassion to the world around us. And we’re going to talk about how we show compassion to ourselves as well, because we need to make sure that we remember to be compassionate to ourselves. And so, compassion is going to be a pretty good topic to learn a lot from this month.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the mat!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!