Compassion: Innate or taught?

I feel terrible, I know I re-opened this blog on a positive note, but what happenned to me today has widned my eyes to how truly selfish I can be.

A woman on the train today collapsed from what looked like epilepsy, it could have been cataplexy but I doubt she was experiencing a strong enough emotion to have experienced it at the time. Anyway, her muscles froze (more technically, her muscle tone dropped) and her eyes were wide open, I don't think I'll ever forget her eyes, wide as though in shock and unmoving as though dead...

It was really quite horrific.

The gentleman around her tried to help her and then she fell to the floor, they then tried carrying her off the train... This is where my selfishness came in. I was directly behind the group of men and sick woman and the train had come to a stop at my destination and as you can imagine they were rather slow... so slow that I was woried the train doors would close before I could get off. So vast was my anxiety for myself that I deliberately brushed past the group.

When my feet were on unmoving ground I was thoroughly mortified in shame... did I have no human compassion? No instinct to help those in immediate danger? No recognition of an emergency? I was so calm throughout the whole thing that it unnerved me. In fact, I was shaking after the whole thing had happenned because I was so shocked at myself. I didn't offer to help and didn't hang around to see if she was okay like the hero men who did. I just carried on walking to the next platform. I did go to a staff member and tell him the situation. But I was still very upset at myself.

This got me thinking all the way home of how I should be more compassionate in the future should another situation arise. But... how can you learn compassion? Is it even a taught material? What makes a person compassionate and caring? Is it because their parents taught them how, or was it something that was genetically installed? Or something else entirely?

In the end.. I feel rather cold hearted, the good bit I suppose is that I don't like being cold hearted at all. 

An Unfortunate Event

I was told recently that I'm doing no help to the family considering I'm at home all day, so i've taken up the cooking responsibilities, and I'm really enjoying it actually! Only up to the point where it gets laid onto the table and no-one comes down to the dining room to eat it.

Yesterday I was starting to get ready for cooking, I was trying to pull out one of the big bowls from the back of the cupboard, the thing is, I ended up breaking the china.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The next thing I hear is a sound of crashing and around my feet are some of the best china plates we have.. broken! BROKEN! I wanted to DIE! The plates were broken! BROKEN!!! They had little gold patterned flowers on them.. and they were broken!!! BROKEN! THE GUILT!!! Then the next thing I thought was 'mum's gonna kill me'.

'It not your fault' said my grandma behind, me, surveying everything (her favourite hobby),
'Mama's gonna kill me!!!' I whispered under my breath, I was happy that my grandma was trying to make me feel better, but I started doubting her intentions after the next few things she said...

'Dey from turkey!' at this statement I felt like I was sinking in cold water... If they were from turkey that meant they were old china.... as in, from 50 years ago.... as in, unreplaceable, and just when I thought things couldn't get worse, my grandma kept repeating that the plates were from Turkey and gave a little history on it.

Miss. Short Fuse came into the Kitchen and saw the mess and gave me a bit of a telling off, because she evidently thought I was remorseless and needed a few more emotional lacerations ontop of everything else. But I decided then that I would tell mama and take it on like a woman.

So I scavenged the plates that did break and put them safely away from the Destructive Dessa. I cleaned up the mess and put the wreckage into a plastic bag, grimacing everytime I heard the sound of the pieces clanging against each other.. highlighting my sin.

I cooked the dinner, and just in time for Miss. Short Fuse before she went to work, and told mum about the plates, surprisingly she was actually calm about it. It looks like my grandma told her what happened, I can imagine her grinning while saying it (she likes to grin at strange situations). Mum gave me a hug and said it wasn't my fault.

I'm not voluntarily open to my mum, but it's strange the power mothers have, the moment she gives me her motherish hug, I open like dam, and spill everything. I hope I have that power one day.

Tomorrow I get my results, so prepare from some waterworks, I'm giving it no thought at all that my subconscience mind is scaring me a little and makes me think that in the back of my head and deep in my soul, hope had died.

Well... what can I do?