I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy lately about the way compassion gets talked about. Everywhere I look there seems to be another “community of practice” dedicated to it. These gatherings often radiate good intentions, candlelight and hashtags. But if I’m honest, they can also carry a faint whiff of smugness – a kind of we’re-all-so-compassionate-together energy that makes me want to back slowly out of the room.
I don’t feel entirely comfortable saying that, because as a mindfulness meditation teacher, I know how vital compassion is. It underpins so many wellbeing outcomes: lower stress, greater resilience, stronger relationships, better health. The research is solid, but my discomfort isn’t about compassion itself; it’s about how we sometimes cocoon it in comfort.
The real work of compassion – the kind that makes a difference in workplaces, families and communities – isn’t soft, glowing or Instagram-friendly. It’s gritty. It’s choosing to respond with kindness when someone has just said something you find frustrating, unfair or plain rude. It’s showing up with curiosity instead of defensiveness when your instinct is to pull away. It’s being gentle with yourself when you’ve messed something up and your inner critic is shouting in full surround sound.
Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion highlights that these moments – when we feel most unworthy, most fallible – are the exact times we need compassion the most. Yet they’re also the hardest times to access it. Paul Gilbert, who developed Compassion Focused Therapy, describes compassion as a courageous act that regulates our brain’s threat system. In other words, compassion isn’t about feeling nice; it’s about training ourselves to stay steady and human when everything in us wants to fight, flee or freeze.
So, while I completely understand the value of compassion circles and half-day workshops (they build the habit for when it’s needed), I sometimes wonder if we risk “mistaking the warm-up for the marathon” as they say. Practising compassion in a room full of people who already agree with us is like rehearsing a conversation in the mirror – useful for confidence, but not the same as real life.
Real compassion gets tested in the small, messy moments. That colleague who dominates every meeting and won’t stop talking. The neighbour who complains about the sound of your wife singing lullabies to your baby in the back garden (yes, a genuine example). The teenage family member who pushes all your buttons before breakfast (another real-life example). Those are the moments that matter, because compassion isn’t measured by how serene we look on a retreat but by how we respond when someone really winds us up.
I’m pretty sure that compassion doesn’t live in my calmest moments at all. Maybe it lives in the seconds between irritation and response – the tiny pause where I decide whether to react or relate. So perhaps that’s the challenge for this week: notice where your compassion feels most stretched, not where it comes easily. That’s where the practice really begins.
