On compassion
The article “On Compassion” written by Barbara Lazear Ascher depicts the author’s personal feelings towards the homeless and how they are treated in society. In her article, she dwells more on compassion. Ideally, compassion is the willingness and desire of one to try and help in a painful situation or to salvage the whole situation. Ascher insists that compassion does not necessarily an innate trait but comes with the daily experiences that people go through in life (37). The article depicts Ascher examining her own feelings of the homeless people in the society. This is shown as she explains the story of a man who was walking across the streets of New York and people’s perspective towards him. Ascher connects the story of the homeless man to her central theme, which is compassion and tries to elaborate the manner in which the homeless person would have been treated. In her work, she elaborates various lessons that one would emulate in life.
Compassion comes by through empathy in most of the situations. Through empathy, one can easily understand the people living around them and hence can lead to a person developing compassion. For example, Ascher explains her views on compassion through a man walking in the streets of New york. As the man walks, he is able to get food and money. Contrarily, some citizens in the streets also look at the same man from a disgusting point and believe that he should not be part of them. “The others on the corner, five men and women waiting for the crosstown bus, look away (35).” Compassion being a root of empathy is well explained by Ascher as she also urges people to develop such virtues in their daily endeavours. In many occasions, Ascher tries to ask the audience why they were helping the needy man and hence discovers that the compassion roots from the empathy that was built in them (36). Ideally, the writer tries to elaborate that people should develop virtues such as kindness and empathy to be able to help one another in situations such as that of the homeless man.
New York is a busy city with several activities taking place. For this reason, people believe that the city never goes to rest at any point since it has so many activities in it. Ascher creates the right image of the city and tries to elaborate to people how the real world is like and what people should learn from it (35). The image of the homeless in the streets and people going about their various duties is well elaborated in the article. We see “his button less shirt, with one sleeve missing, hangs outside the waist of his baggy trousers (35)”, hence more attention is drawn to the poor homeless man (36). Ideally, the image is meant to educate people on the difference in social status that people must accept and live where they fit. Additionally, the view is able to make people understand her explanation of compassion.
The article generally analyses the topic of compassion. From the writers’ point of view, compassion is essential and believes that it is a topic that should be discussed more often. In” On Compassion”, Ascher explains why people react differently upon seeing a poor homeless or needy person. She alludes that in such situations, people should be able to put themselves in the shoes of the needy person by expressing kindness in their daily setting. Furthermore, she elaborates that hardships in life are able to act as a lesson to people hence making them to be empathic and compassionate to one another.
Work cited
Ascher, Barbara Lazear. “On Compassion.” The Brief Bedford Reader (2003): 35-37
https://www.sausd.us/cms/lib/CA01000471/Centricity/Domain/457/OnCompassion.pdf