compassion essay (1 to 1 1/2 pages)

BARBARA LAZEAR ASCHER

On Compassion In the following passage, Barbara Lazear Ascher recalls a couple of brief encounters with homeless people in

New York City that ultimately inform her views “on compassion.”

The man’s grin is less the result of circumstance than

dreams or madness. His buttonless shirt, with one sleeve

missing, hangs outside the waist of his baggy trousers.

Carefully plaited dreadlocks bespeak a better time, long ago.

As he crosses Manhattan’s Seventy-Ninth Street, his gait is

the shuffle of the forgotten ones held in place by gravity

rather than plans. On the corner of Madison Avenue, he stops

before a blond baby in an Aprica stroller. The baby’s mother

waits for the light to change and her hands close tighter on the

stroller’s handle as she sees the man approach. (1)

The others on the corner, five men and women waiting for

the crosstown bus, look away. They daydream a bit and gaze

into the weak rays of November light. A man with a briefcase

lifts and lowers the shiny toes of his right shoe, watching the

light reflect, trying to catch and balance it, as if he could hold

and make it his, to ease the heavy gray of coming January,

February, March. The winter months that will send snow

around the feet, calves, and knees of the grinning man as he

heads for the shelter of Grand Central or Pennsylvania

Station. (2)

But for now, in this last gasp of autumn warmth, he is still.

His eyes fix on the baby. The mother removes her purse from

her shoulder and rummages through its contents: lipstick, a

lace handkerchief, an address book. She finds what she’s

looking for and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to

the man who stands and stares even though the light has

changed and traffic navigates around his hips. (3)

His hands continue to angle at his sides. He does not know

his part. He does not know that acceptance of the gift and

gratitude are what makes this transaction complete. The baby,

weary of the unwavering stare, pulls its blanket over its head.

The man does not look away. Like a bridegroom waiting at

the altar, his eyes pierce the white veil. (4)

The mother grows impatient and pushes the stroller before

her, bearing the dollar like a cross. Finally, a black hand rises

and closes around green. (5)

Was it fear or compassion that motivated the gift? (6)

Up the avenue, at Ninety-First Street, there is a small

French bread shop where you can sit and eat a buttery,

overpriced croissant and wash it down with rich cappuccino.

Twice when I have stopped here to stave hunger or stay the

cold, twice as I have sat and read and felt the warm rush of

hot coffee and milk, an old man has wandered in and stood

inside the entrance. He wears a stained blanket pulled up to

his chin, and a woolen hood pulled down to his gray, bushy

eyebrows. As he stands, the scent of stale cigarettes and urine

fills the small, overheated room. (7)

The owner of the shop, a moody French woman, emerges

from the kitchen with steaming coffee in a Styrofoam cup,

and a small paper bag of . . . of what? Yesterday’s bread?

Today’s croissant? He accepts the offering as silently as he

came, and is gone. (8)

Twice I have witnessed this, and twice I have wondered,

what compels this woman to feed this man? Pity? Care?

Compassion? Or does she simply want to rid her shop of his

troublesome presence? If expulsion were her motivation she

would not reward his arrival with gifts of food. Most

proprietors do not. They chase the homeless from their midst

with expletives and threats. (9)

As winter approaches, the mayor of New York City is

moving the homeless off the streets and into Bellevue

Hospital. The New York Civil Liberties Union is watchful.

They question whether the rights of these people who live in

our parks and doorways are being violated by involuntary

hospitalization. (10)

I think the mayor’s notation is humane, but I fear it is

something else as well. Raw humanity offends our

sensibilities. We want to protect ourselves from an awareness

of rags with voices that make no sense and scream forth in

inarticulate rage. We do not wish to be reminded of the

tentative state of our own well-being and sanity. And so, the

troublesome presence is removed from the awareness of the

electorate. (11)

Like other cities, there is much about Manhattan now that

resembles Dickensian London. Ladies in high-heeled shoes

pick their way through poverty and madness. You hear more

cocktail party complaint than usual, "I just can’t take New

York anymore." Our citizens dream of the open spaces of

Wyoming, the manicured exclusivity of Hobe Sound. (12)

And yet, it may be that these are the conditions that finally

give birth to empathy, the mother of compassion. We cannot

deny the existence of the helpless as their presence grows. It

is impossible to insulate ourselves against what is at our very

doorstep. I don’t believe that one is born compassionate.

Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It

must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our

windows, coming through the gates of our yards, the walls of

our towns, adversity that becomes so familiar that we begin to

identify and empathize with it. (13)

For the ancient Greeks, drama taught and reinforced

compassion within a society. The object of Greek tragedy was

to inspire empathy in the audience so that the common

response to the hero’s fall was: "There, but for the grace of

God, go I." Could it be that this was the response of the

mother who offered the dollar, the French woman who gave

the food? Could it be that the homeless, like those ancients,

are reminding us of our common humanity? Of course, there

is a difference. This play doesn’t end—and the players can’t

go home. (14)