I was reading a book and came across the word ‘passion’. I went to do some chores and then started reading another book, which had the word ‘compassion’. I started comparing passion and compassion.
I looked at MW dictionary, and it says that passion is a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something, and compassion is a feeling of wanting to help someone, or a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.
Therefore, in passion, there is a strong feeling, but that feeling is to achieve something for ourselves. On the other hand, compassion is a feeling to help others. There is some similarity (presence of feeling in both), but there is a difference in the meaning of these words.
In everyday life, many times we misunderstand compassion shown by others and think that it is passion. For example, think of a gentleman who wants to help a woman carrying a small child and heavy bags. The woman may misinterpret his compassion and may think he is passionate about her. Similarity, an egoist man may misunderstand compassion shown by a woman, as her passion to pursue him.
Compassion may lead to passion or passion may lead to compassion, or both can occur independently. An example: a person helps a beggar at a railway station, this is compassion, but this one time help makes him do this repeatedly and it becomes a passion for him to help the needy, so compassion led to passion. For an opposite example, a businessperson may have a passion for building a huge, successful business and getting tons of revenue, but he may not have any compassion for the workers, so here passion exists without compassion. Before misunderstanding anyone and labeling someone as passionate in the wrong way, think whether he/she is a compassionate person.
Compassion and community service:
Community service is not only by time and money. There are many ways for this. Some of these are giving a smile, respect, dignity, emotional support, etc.
Compassion goes a long way. We remember Ram and Krishn from thousands of years back. However, try to remember the name of your ancestors and see how many generations do you remember (just their names). Usually not more than two to five. We remember compassionate people ( people who have compassion for the whole society, not only for their families) for eternity.
To some, compassion comes naturally. However, the remaining needs effort.
Dr. Bharti Raizada