Favorite Inspirational Quotes

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Dalai Lama

In the essay for this inspirational quote, Mike Brescia offers a story about a learning-disabled child. It’s actually a repeat of the story the boy’s father told at his school during a fund raising event and later recorded in a book by a rabbi. There’s no way I could do the story justice here so I looked it up to put a link here and found a snopes.com citation. I went there to check out what they had to say about the truth of the story.

Apparently it is a true story but the snopes entry, as written by Barbara Mikkelson, truly missed the point, in my opinion, even though she says that the story “…positions the 18 boys who fooled the disabled child into thinking he’d done something miraculous as great-hearted lads who reached into their souls and therein found the kindness with which to lavish upon a less-abled youngster.”

She further proceeds with her negative take on the whole story even going so far as to say, “This story counsels that ‘perfection’ be one of pity and dismissal of the actual person.” I just don’t think she gets it or perhaps her whole perspective of the world is negative as snopes’ mission is to debunk urban mythology. She didn’t show that the story was not true but instead attacks it as being wrong-minded saying that the boys’ actions were dismissive of the disabled person that Shay is for allowing him to do something he could not normally do.

Let me ask this - have you ever thought about getting 18+ boys to throw a game just for one other kid. Not only did it make Shay (or Shaya depending upon the version) feel ecstatic to finally get, not only to first base, which is something he had never done before (which implies he had tried playing ball before), but all the way home.

It also made those boys who showed compassion feel great as well. Who knows what ripple effect that could have in their lives? I seriously doubt they were feeling how great they were because they had duped the young boy and made a fool of him. I doubt they felt that at all. They were feeling great because Shay got to feel what it was like to make it home and they were helping him. What is wrong with showing compassion?

When I delivered Meals on Wheels with my husband, I was showing compassion toward those who were home bound. They were happy to receive the meal and the conversations we had. We were happy because we were helping those who couldn’t help themselves in this manner. Does that make our actions one of “pity and dismissal”? I think not.

And I think those boys were touched by the Divine for that brief moment to show compassion. Who knows if they would ever do the same again? As Brescia says in his essay on the quote above from the Dalai Lama and this story, “We all have thousands of opportunities a day to help realize God’s plan. So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a spark of the Divine? Or do we pass up that opportunity, and leave the world a bit colder in the process?”

As for me, I would rather help others as I can and leave them and myself feeling better, even for just a little while, for having shown a little compassion.

Tags: Shay