Tag: Daniel Goleman

Compassion: What It Really Means and How to Cultivate It

In a needy, often dark world, there thankfully exist compassionate people, going the last mile, thinking always of others, their sufferings and needs.

I think of Doctors Without Borders, for example, a French organization of physicians and nurses, working not only in Third World Countries, but often in war zones such as Somalia, South Sudan, and Gaza at considerable risk, their starting pay, a mere $2600 a month.

This ability to feel another’s pain and taking it on, where does it come from? I know that personal suffering can trigger it, perhaps a bad childhood, an abusive relationship, a betrayal by one we trusted, the death of a close friend or relative, unemployment, poverty, or personal illness.

Some just seem endowed with it from birth. I think of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein, keenly sensitive to the social ills of their time; Tolstoy, rich and famous, but disclaiming it all, in sympathy with the poor; John Stuart Mill, champion of the minority’s right to be heard.

Empathy’s great, putting yourself in the shoes of another, but I think of compassion as going beyond sympathy as with these individuals committed to helping others.

I would offer what’s been called emotional intelligence” (EQ) as a principal starting point in generating compassion. Pioneered by psychologist and behavioral science journalist Dr. Daniel Goleman in his 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it May be More Important Than IQ, it offers potential for amelioration of intrapersonal relationships across a wide spectrum.

Its hallmarks are several:

An ability to intuit what others are feeling.

A calmness in contexts of stress.

An ability to accept change.

An ability to defuse highly charged situations

An awareness of your own feelings.

We often conceive IQ as a denominator of ultimate academic and professional success, but I’d posit emotional intelligence as far more consequential for your happiness in everyday life.

Like to know if you possess this wonderful attribute? Well, the good news is that there are tests to measure it.

But don’t fret if you fall short. You can cultivate it, something I’ve been trying to do.

Some of these measuring tools are popular self-response tests. You’re asked to respond to conflict scenarios and select from multiple choices you’re likely response. This takes a lot of honesty, however.

More formally, a psychological test, [the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)], has you do performance tasks assessing your ability to perceive, identify, understand, and manage emotions. These comprise the generally recognized four aspects of emotional intelligence. I confess I’ve work to do.

A salient element of emotional intelligence is learning to listen and getting at the cause behind someone’s feelings. Not interrupting them is crucial, signaling not only politeness, but your regard for them and taking their narrative seriously.

Emotional intelligence has helped me especially in contexts of social tension. Seeing things from the African-American perspective, for example, has afforded me an understanding of black rage: enslaved, lynched, denied the vote, profiled by police, overly imprisoned, discriminated against in housing and employment, their rage and distrust of white authority is symptomatic. Those with high EQ don’t react with condemnation. They address the milieu of that disconnect.

In summary, EQ people think things out before they react.

They’re sensitive to their own feelings and willing to objectively assess their origin.

In considering the perspectives and emotions of others, they understand motivating factors behind their behavior, moving to address them.

If you ask me for contemporary models of EQ, I would include former president Jimmy Carter, superb negotiator associated with Habitat for Humanity; Nelson Mandela, imprisoned 27 years, but advocate of reconciliation; Jane Goodall, redefining our relationship with animals and spokesperson for both the environment and the African poor. Each of these individuals, teeming with awareness, translated their EQ into activism. Beyond empathy, it’s compassion.

As Indian sage Amit Ray has eloquently expressed it, “Compassion is all inclusive. It knows no boundaries. Compassion comes with awareness, and awareness breaks all narrow territories.”

By the way, if people tell you you’re too sensitive or emotional, it just may be you have high EQ. I think that’s a good thing!

—rj

Character: Passport to Destiny

English: Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus...
English: Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve read a lot of books across the years, not surprising I suppose for someone who’s invested more than forty-years in academia.  Of those many books, there are a chosen few I’d take with me into island exile.  Let me list them.  I’d add some poets, too, but not right now:

David Copperfield
Walden
The Varieties of Religious Experience
On Liberty.
Mill’s Autobiography
The Odyssey
To Have or To Be
How to Find Freedom in an Unfree World
Ulysses
The Aeneid

I fashioned this list in less than a minute, since each of the items triggers easily recalled memories of excited discovery, awe, and insight.  David Copperfield, for example, I read in eighth grade. From the very beginning I loved it, identifying with David, whose childhood, in good measure, mirrored my own as well as that of Dickens.

Walden, with its eloquence, gave sanctuary not only in wilderness, but in its verbal tranquility.

And there’s John Stuart Mill, that proverbial “saint of rationalism,” two of his books here.  On Liberty taught me to hold out against censorship for the rest of my days; how to discern between just and unjust laws; the importance of protecting minority voices in a democratic society.

His Autobiography demonstrated a first rate humanity, a life of balanced thought and feeling, a passion for social justice. There isn’t any person I’d like to imitate more.

I could go on about the remaining works, too, as each of them has constituted a grace upon my life–a favoring of wisdom and influence.  Of all of them, the one I esteem most is surely Vergil‘s The Aeneid, which I chose to teach in my literature classes for a good many years.

Now I’m not about to launch a book review here.  I simply offer that this ancient, extended poem, ostensibly a tribute to his patron, Augustus Octavian, whom some historians rank as among the wisest of rulers, ultimately deals with what the Romans regarded as pietas, or the ability to rule one’s passions.  As such it mirrors the civic code for good leaders everywhere, sadly forfeited by most.

But The Aeneid is good for you and me as well in its call for balanced living in the stasis of mind and heart, thought and emotion, logos and pathos.  To conquer yourself is to conquer a world.

When I studied in Europe on two occasions, England and France, I came upon an important word, character, something I find rarely talked about in America.  Europeans would often talk of someone’s character, encompassing integrity markers like dependability, perseverance, equanimity, fairness, empathy, all adding up to a fundamental decency. It’s what Vergil advocated. It’s what Mill is all about. It’s what I’d like, when all things are said and done, people to say of me:  “I like his character.”  I think it’s what you want too.

Our schools need to inculcate character along with academics. What helps assure success isn’t so much raw intelligence or mastery of a discipline, but the ability to govern oneself exemplified in channeling our emotions into riverbeds of altruism that foster others even as it nurtures our best selves in well-doing.

I like how Daniel Goleman summed it up in his best selling Emotional Intelligence (1995):

Much evidence testifies that people who are emotionally adept–who know and manage their own feelings well, and who read and deal effectively with other people’s feelings–are at an advantage in any domain of life, whether romance and intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in organizational politics.  People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity (p. 36).

Life doesn’t just happen.  We make it happen, for good or bad. We do it best when we learn pietas, or character, with its legacy of decency and discipline fostering empowerment and destiny..

Be well,

rj