Let me start by saying that I have always seen myself as a compassionate person. I donate old clothes, I do charity walks, and I even founded my own non profit organization. But, when it comes to true compassion, I am as lost as Tom Hanks and Wilson when they're stranded out at sea.

I was recently challenged by an amazing professor to take a day and show utter, unbiased compassion for my fellow man. While this seems like an easy task, I soon learned that this would be anything but easy.

To first take the assignment seriously, I looked up the definition of compassion.

compassion

• Noun: a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.

www.marriam-websters.com/dictionary

After reading the true definition, I thought to myself, "I do have a feeling of want to help others, but was it something I felt every day? or was it something that hit me when I felt the urge to be charitable?" We all have those moments of wanting to give and to feel like we have done something good for our society, but I can say for certain that I did not wake up every day wanting to help others. It was not because I was a "bad person," but because it wasn't something that I encountered or thought of on a daily basis. Yet, this day was going to be the day I lived my life for 24 hours with full compassion! This is my journey:

I woke up thinking, "what exactly qualifies as compassion?" Would waking up early and making a run to Dunkin' Donuts for my mother be considered compassionate? I mean, I would be missing out on a glorious extra 15 minutes of sleep, and if that doesn't scream compassion, then I don't know what does.

Nonetheless, I woke up early and got my mother coffee, which made her happy, which, in turn, made me happy. While at Dunkin' Donuts, I bought a brilliant homeless man a sandwich and coffee. I took a few moments to have a geniune conversation with him, and learned that he served in the army in World War II at the age of 18, and had been on the streets for many more years than he expected, but he wasn't mad about it. In a way, he seemed as though he had come to peace with it. I told him about my experiment for the day, and he shared with me how every Friday morning, he went around to the local shelters, had breakfast, and talked to the other vets about their experiences. The vets discussed how they overcame their PTSD and how they still cope. He said that sometimes, people just need to talk and have someone listen. In his eyes, listening to someone without interruption and without judegment was showing someone the ultimate act of compassion.

That thought of listening unbiasedly sat with me all through class and into the rest of my compassionate journey. How often had I sat and tuned someone out that began talking because I was busy on my phone or watching a t.v. show? That day, I would make listening to someone, truly listening to them, apart of my journey.

As my day went on, I expected more oppurtinites to arise for me to conquer with all the compassion I could muster, but those in need don't exactly just pop up like weeds waiting to be pulled, and I knew that I would have to get out of my comfort zone and look a little harder at the world.

I spent the rest of my day looking at the world with new eyes, all while going about business as usual. At the grocery store, I read to a man that couldn't read what kind of waffles he was trying to buy, and was told to never stop learning. He also told me that even though he couldn't read, he watched educational T.V. only.

I talked to an elderly woman while waiting for lunch at the mall, and learned that she was there with her granddaughter who was looking for jewelry for her upcoming wedding; she was hoping she would find everything she needed because she knew her granddaughter was going to be the most beautiful bride, and she felt blessed to have made it that long in life to witness the union.

I took my disabled mother out to dinner and held back tears as she happily ate her meal and rambled on about what a good day she had with me pushing her all over peddlers village. At dinner, I realized I had needed it just as much as she did, if not more with all that was going on in our lives and the self-pity I sometimes wallowed in, that she was still a bright spot in my life, and always would be because she understood my schedule, she understood my stress and my sleepless nights; she listened to me every time I spoke and gave encouraging words, giving her only daughter the true compassion my vet friend had given to so many others.

While I didn't exactly achieve world peace that day, I did begin to focus on the little things more. To me, compassion was more than just helping those in materialistic need. It was smiling at the little girl in the grocery store, holding the door open a little longer for the man in the wheelchair, and buying a stranger a meal. It was doing good without expecting notoriety, or being high fived and told I was the greatest. The smiles on the faces of those I was able to help were more than enough payment for me, and made me want to put my best foot forward every day in the name of compassion.