February 2024, and it seems like there is so much to look forward to. Mardi Gras, Black History Month, the Super Bowl, and potentially most exciting of all, Valentine’s Day. Yet the lack of love in almost everyone I meet couldn’t be more apparent.
I find myself fretting over a chipped nail while a war escalates on the complete other side of the world. When the issue is brought up in conversation, the phrase, “there’s really nothing we can do” or “there’s always something going on with those people” seems to “fix” it all. As Florida’s Legislative Session churns out bill after bill after bill, I watch committee meetings where people step up to the podium to speak and just break down completely instead.
I wonder when we became blind to suffering. Celebrity scandal after celebrity scandal emerges, and I talk to people who seem to care more about whether Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce break up rather than the daily lives of their closest friends. During her senior year of high school, my sister’s best friend stopped being friends with her after misinterpreting an encounter with her boyfriend as flirty, and I wonder when we became so unwilling to listen. I feel enclosed by apathy.
Somewhere in the middle of thinking all these thoughts, I realize that somewhere down the line, we messed up and stopped looking at people as people. When my friend screams at the TV after Ross gets jealous of Mark in Season 3 of FRIENDS, I wonder why no one tries to empathize with Ross or understand his trauma.
I cry watching those committee meetings— I cry thinking about all the lives lost to war. I wish people did too and that they talked about it instead of trying to shun away anything even remotely resembling emotion. Compassion is not just pity. It’s caring, it’s love, it’s being empathetic to the people around you, and especially during such a tense political time in Florida, the country, and the world, we need compassion now more than ever. Now is the time to feel, not to shut the world out because it all hurts too much to think about.
Imagine if instead of saying, “There’s nothing we can do,” we said, “What can I do to help?” Imagine if a Senator listening to testimonies paused and considered changing their vote instead of sticking to party lines, or before we cut people out of our lives, we gave them the chance to explain themselves first before jumping to conclusions.
The title of this article is “What Happened to Compassion?” but I don’t know how to answer that question yet. I don’t know where our compassion for each other has gone, or when exactly we became so wrapped up in our worlds that we forgot to be a part of everyone else’s.
I think part of the solution is just letting yourself feel, and letting yourself understand that your actions are important. Showing someone that you care can go a long way— especially in college. Compassion isn’t gone— it’s just been buried beneath apathy and distraction. Let yourself be vulnerable with others, and maybe compassion will make a reappearance somewhere along the way.