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Ashley Glambin

Professor William Reader

ENG 111

3 November 2022

Compassion in Different Aspects of my Life

I like to think of myself as compassionate, but not as compassionate as I

should be. To begin, compassion can be defined as sympathetic pity and concern

for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. There are times when I do not think

of others and disregard others' emotions. When it comes to being in a

relationship, you have to have compassion, and it is something that I work on

every day with my fiance so that I can be a better partner. My career path also

requires compassion because young children have big emotions, so you need to

be able to have sympathy to help them work through their feelings. I also

struggle to have compassion toward myself and that is something I want in my

life. For example, I tend to beat myself up when I don’t do something to

perfection and tend to put my feelings last. There are also times when I let the

feelings of others consume me and focus just on their feelings and work on

helping them until they are feeling better. I would like to have a balance of

compassion in my life.

I want to become a more compassionate person in life and it is something

that I am currently working towards and will need to continue working on for the
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rest of my life. Compassion can look different in various situations. Writers are

talking about what compassion means and look like in those different situations

and contexts. Compassion looks different with a romantic partner than it does

working specifically in my future career of teaching. Compassion also looks

different when it is towards yourself.

Compassion is a key part of a relationship which is a big part of my life.. In

the article, “Self-Compassion and Compassion Towards One’s Partner Mediate

the Negative Association Between Insecure Attachment and Relationship

Quality” by Olivia Bolt et. al, they say:

“Second, the acceptance of the imperfect human experience may enhance

mutual acceptance of imperfection of the two partners in a romantic

relationship. Related, compassion for others (specifically the partner)

might facilitate relationship functioning through a greater acceptance of

the other, leading to reduced conflict behavior, as well as more supportive

behavior during difficult times” (2).

An important part of compassion is accepting people's differences. Another

writer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, touched on this topic in a general way, rather

than directing it to a relationship specifically, and said in his writing/interview

“Cosmopolitanism”:

“That means, first, we’re responsible collectively for each other as citizens

are, but second–and this is what differentiates cosmopolitans from other

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kinds of people who are universalists, who say everybody

matters–cosmopolitan's think that it's OK for people to be different. They

care about everybody but not in the way that means they want everybody

to be the same or like them” (24)

While Appiah doesn’t state this is compassion, this is qualities of compassion he

also doesn’t directly say here that this is for a relationship, but it can be used in a

relationship, as partners are not all the same. Appiah and Bolt both agree that

compassion is about accepting people's differences and imperfections.

Compassion is also an important thing to have in my future career and looks

different than in a relationship. The writers, Simona De Stasio et. al in their

article, “The Interplay of Compassion, Subjective Happiness and Proactive

Strategies on Kindergarten Teachers’ Work Engagement and Perceived Working

Environment Fit”, say:

“Indeed, kindergarten teachers, unlikely their colleagues of the primary and

secondary schools, are required to perform a range of caring activities in

addition to their educational tasks [1,4,5] and to work in teams, to better address

the complexity of kindergarten tasks and demands by means of a constant

contact between teaching colleagues, head teachers, and members of other

workgroups [6].” (1). Being a kindergarten teacher or even just an elementary

teacher requires a lot of compassion as children are learning to handle their

emotions and everything seems like a big problem or too hard, with the skill of
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compassion, I will be able to be a better teacher. Appiah has a similar view that

compassion is important in teaching as he says:

“One kind of person who is open to strangers, open to the world, accepting

in a way that abandons all judgment–that perspective produces a kind of

cultural relativism in which you say, ‘whatever they want to do that's fine

and I'm interested in it, I'm curious about it; I have a cosmopolitan

curiosity about it…’” (25).

While this isn’t directly saying compassion in teaching like De Stasio et. al does,

it can be used in teaching, in the sense that it is part of compassion in accepting

others, and it also refers to being open to strangers which teachers have to be as

they have new students and there may be new faculty each year.

While compassion is important in teaching and in a relationship, it is also

important to have compassion for yourself. Two writers, Jocelyn Grzybowski and

Thomas M. Brinthaupt in their article, “Trait Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and

Self-Talk: A Correlational Analysis of Young Adults”, say, “ [22]. For example,

researchers find that higher levels of self-compassion are associated with lower

levels of negative self-evaluation, such as self-criticism, shame, and self-blame

[23,24]” (2). This is an important trait in life as we can be the hardest on

ourselves. Self-compassion helps with other aspects of our lives. Bolt et al. agree

with Grzybowski and Brinthaupt they say, “Low compassionate attitude towards

self was a statistical mediator between attachment anxiety and relationship

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quality. This indicates that high attachment anxiety predicted low compassionate

attitude towards self, which in turn predicted low relationship quality”(5). This

relates back to the beginning of the essay also with compassion in relationships,

as when you have good self-compassion you will have better mental health, and

it will also better your relationships as well.

To add, from my research, reading and writing, I have learned that compassion

is and will always be a big part of my life. This essay has shown me that I need

to be compassionate in life so that I can have a better and healthy relationship,

as well as be a good teacher. This essay has also shown me that compassion for

myself will better my mental health and also help with my relationships.

To conclude compassion is a very important life skill and is something that I

want to become, but it will look different in different aspects of my life. The

compassion that i would use in my relationship will be different than with my

future students andd both will be different from the compassion I will show to

myself.
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Works Cited

Bolt, Olivia C., et al. “Self-Compassion and Compassion towards One's

Partner Mediate the Negative Association between Insecure Attachment and

Relationship Quality.” Journal of Relationships Research, vol. 10, no. e20, 2019, pp.

1–9., https://doi.org/10.1017/jrr.2019.17.

De Stasio, Simona, et al. “The Interplay of Compassion, Subjective

Happiness and Proactive Strategies on Kindergarten Teachers’ Work

Engagement and Perceived Working Environment Fit.” International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 17, no. 13, ser. 4869, 2020, pp.

1–16. 4869, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17134869.

Grzybowski, Jocelyn, and Thomas M. Brinthaupt. “Trait Mindfulness,

Self-Compassion, and Self-Talk: A Correlational Analysis of Young Adults.”

Behavioral Sciences, vol. 12, no. 9, ser. 300, 23 Aug. 2022, pp. 1–15. 300,

https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12090300.

"Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism," From Astra Taylor (ed.).

Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers. New York: The New

Press, 2009.