Day of Compassion Assignment Social Psychology PLEASE CONSIDER FOR AWARD

Sriram P Kalathoor

On September 6th , my Day of Compassion venture was prematurely cut short. It had been raining cats and dogs for over a week, and a tree in the locality collapsed, exposing a squirrel nest, a dead mom-squirrel and her three feeble, barely-alive babies.

Figure 1: The Feeble Triplets Two of them died on 2nd, and with much eort, I fought to keep the last one alive. Baby squirrels dont survive long without their mothers. I was feeling quite proud of my eort when the little one showed improvements healthy excretion, wet nose and regular squeals. But on the Day of Compassion, I woke up to nd that even this last baby was no longer alive. And I began to think . . . is this what Compassion leads to? Sadness? To verify this, I gave another shot at it on the 10th of September. Being an early morning person, I woke up before dawn, and went jogging at the beach. While this is part of my usual everyday routine, I got yelled at by the Beach Patrol for being up so early. I tried to politely 1

Figure 2: The Last Survivor explain to him that I come here everyday, but all I received were slurs and racist abuses in return. In the end, I decided to ignore him (after all, he could have had a bad day at work too), nished my daily jog of 2.5kms and returned home. On my way back, I found a cow and its calf by the shade whiling away. As an Indian, I nd that cows hold a special place in my heart. For the cow and its calf, I bought 2 bananas, some jackfruit and some greengrass. Seeing the cow much away happily gave me a pleasure that redened my grumpiness from the beach. Outside my house gate, I bought milk from the local milkman, and paid him a little extra, seeing as he has been providing quality, unadulterated milk to us for over 15 years now. The smile on his face as he received the money was priceless, and I wondered . . . Even money, if used correctly, in appropriate situations, can create happiness I bathed in cold water, to save Mother Earth the trouble of heating it up... my part of environmental concern for the day. I dressed and took o for the Lab. On the way to the bus stop, I saw a former neighbor, an 80 year old lady, who was struggling to cross the road. When I took her hand and helped her reach her destination, she gave me her blessings for success in my endeavors this inspired condence in me to work to my fullest. On the bus, however, it was a dierent story. Another group of old people men this time boarded the bus. Seeing their age, I let them board rst. In return, I got shoved back on the road, missed the bus, and nearly lost my leg. Grumpiness returns... Time at the lab ew by while I contemplated the ramications of Compassion. However, I made my best eort to ensure that I listened to every work that my Professor spoke, and I could see that he appreciated my attention. This gave me a modicum of satisfaction for the day. On my way back, I bought groceries at the local supermarket, and paid the teller 5 Rupees as tips. He got oended and said that he wanted more or nothing at all. I told him this was all I could aord, and he grudgingly accepted it. I also booked a new Nokia Lumia phone on the internet for my younger sister, since her birthday was coming up, and also because she had taken care of me when I was sick a few weeks back. I sent a print copy of the order 2

Figure 3: The Munching Cow with the delivery due date, to her, and I got a call from her expressing unparalleled enthusiasm and happiness. The money in the account would never have given me that happiness, but spending it for a loved one did. As my nal act of compassion to the planet for the day, I lived without TV and the Air Conditioner through the night, and switched o the lights early before hitting the sack. I prayed for compassion and love to prevail in the world, and for everyone to be happy, before falling asleep. Notably, my day does contain lesser individual incidents of compassion, but the results have been contrasting. People I know receive compassion and return it well. Those that I dont know take advantage of it, which, in other words, is my loss. This is not to say that I mind being compassionate on a regular basis. If I may say so myself, I have a pretty large Humanity Quotient. Im a vegetarian, an activist with PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) and a volunteer at the Chennai Blue Cross. These acts of compassion are secondnature to me. On the other hand, being compassionate toward humans only works if humans are compassionate in their turn, which evidently, is a very rare case. Of course, if I could factor in Hindsight Bias, and I were to tell people that being compassionate is a good thing, they would be better people too. But without this knowledge, for them, its just a mockery of their twisted sense of pride. My eorts at compassion might not be as extensive as certain others, but I did whatever little I could to bring more love into the world. And I slept a peaceful sleep for the night. After all, no matter how small, eorts still have their value. We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. Mother Teresa