Compassion

Did you know that the word compassion means shared suffering? It's the idea of sharing another person's pain and suffering.

"Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed. - The Buddha."

That's what we do in meetings. Even though there's no crosstalk (where you comment on other people's shares), just by the fact that people are sharing together their strengths and weaknesses, their hardships and happiness. We come together to share everything.

Part of our ability to be compassionate seems to come from the anonymity. You would think that you would be more compassionate, or able to identify with someone elses suffering when you are close to them, but many people say they feel closer to people in the program; they feel like they can share anything and still not feel judged.

Judgment is definitely not part of compassion. To judge someone is to alienate them by pronouncing your opinion. Often those that are closest to us try to "fix" things in our lives, or more pointedly, to control things. As we've talked about, control is something that can't be done, especially of other people's lives. So compassion is listening and experiencing without trying to control another.

AA gives you that. AA lets you share without judgment, and identify without trying to control the situation.