Compassion Challenge!
Compassion Challenge is a game designed to help you work out your compassion muscles through little imaginative meditations and exercises.
According to peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh (who was nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize), compassion begins with our ability to see one another as human beings, and seeing one another as human beings begins with imagination. Imagination allows us to build a bridge from what we know about someone--which may be limited to a single hurtful act, or gesture--towards a fuller appreciation of their humanity.
Our imagination can't guide us to specific truth about people we don't know, but imagining specific possibilities can help us foster specific compassion.
Consider the person who cuts you off during your morning commute. All you know about this person is that they cut you off: a single point of knowledge that can only foster anger. But if you can imagine that this person may be late to work, or that they may be on the way to the hospital, it opens the possibility of seeing the perpetrator as another human being with a life full of struggles much like your own--regardless of why this person actually cut you off.
This work of imagination can be done closer to home as well, with people who are harder to love. Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, encourages us to think of a person who has caused us deep suffering--like an absent or abusive parent--and to imagine this person as a five-year-old child. Again: our imagination can't fill in the factual details of this person's life, but it can lead us towards some appreciation for our shared humanity, and consequently towards compassion.
This work is slow and difficult. It is not intended to gloss over suffering, or to absolve wrongdoing. Imagination does not overwrite fact, and compassion does not exonerate hurtful actions or remove consequences for those actions. But without imagination and compassion, there can ultimately be no bridge between oneself and the other, and as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, without that bridge there can be no peace.
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- learningtoloveyoumore.com (SFMOMA project by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July)
- Ignatius of Loyola, who championed the transforming power of imagination in sixteenth century Europe.
- Jane McGonigal’s work (Reality is Broken, Superbetter), where she often uses games to tackle the root causes of various real-world problems.
- Parker Palmer, an educator and activist who, like Thich Nhat Hanh, advocates inner work, imagination, and compassion to tackle real world conflict.
- Nelson Mandela, another advocate of inner work, who said, after 27 years in prison: "As I walked out the door toward my freedom I knew that if I did not leave all the anger, hatred and bitterness behind I would still be in prison."
- Contemplative traditions within all of the world’s cultures and religions.
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