If a compassionate heart puts a brake and says, “Let me think about it.”
Then you have missed the moment of serving someone who really, really deserves it.
Any act of compassion, as we postpone it, can be very tragic in our lives.
And often my patients used to come back after they would feel healthier.
They would come back and convey a word of thanks and say,
“You are the most compassionate person we have ever met.”
This has been the regular comments, day after day and I said, “Why would you say such a thing?
Anybody else can also give you similar health care.” He said, “No. The way you take a prescription
the way you greet us, the way you hand over and make us understand how to take medicine
and when I am unable to come, to fill my prescription,
you send somebody to pick up the prescription and also drop it back at no cost.
How many human beings would do such a thing?” So this, a compassionate heart, I think, moves,
it is impelled, or it cannot but only act.
If a compassionate heart puts a brake and says, “Let me think about it.”
Then you have missed the moment of serving someone who really, really deserves it.
Any act of compassion, as we postpone it, can be very tragic in our lives.
For example, if you are a doctor and you are driving
All of a sudden you see an old man, or an old woman, who has fallen by the road and is bleeding.
But you are driving away, rushing, going back to the hospital
Of course, you are treating a patient in the hospital also
Next day, you hear that on such and such a road,
at such and such a time and such and such a place, someone died.
You, as a doctor, when you hear this news on T. V., or read it in the newspaper, you will recall
“I was passing by that place, at that time, when this person had an accident.”
A true human being would cry his heart out and say,
“Why could I not stop myself and attend to that patient as well?”
So such acts burden our hearts for a very long time. Perhaps we can never forget such moments.
Imagine, if that was your mother and if you could not look after her, imagine the amount of burden that you would carry
I will give you another example. Something that we were supposed to do as children
study well and because of one mark, you lost the admission in the college of your choice,
then you would regret so much, “I wish I had done better preparation.”
Some older people, past sixties, whose parents are no more
but when they reflect on their lives and say, “Oh, I could have done this for my father, I could have done this for my mother
I could have said, ‘Sorry. Sorry for troubling you’ and now they are not there.”
You see, postponing and allowing your compassion to flow through and become an act of kindness
if you have to say sorry, say “Sorry”, apologise. That is also an act of kindness.
Postponing an event that can hurt someone, postponing your words that could hurt someone
these are all acts of kindness. So compassion, I think, can go a long, long way,
if only we listen to our heart and make it an actionable act.
No point harbouring in your heart and saying, “Oh, I love this person.”
Postponing to say, “I love you” is also an act of unkindness
Many people do regret it, “Oh, I had an opportunity. I could have said
something, but because of my shyness, because of whatsoever be the reason
I was not able to express myself.” Express, do not hold it in your heart
At least, you have let it out. And I am sure most of you are in the same boat,
as many people who regret later on
So do not let those regrets settle in. That is also a compassion towards your self.