This chapter focuses on how we can learn to be more kind to each other and to ourselves. This comes not just from wanting to be kind, but knowing how. Principally, this involves helping students increase their awareness of their own emotional lives and those of others. If students are able to understand others’ emotions and behaviors in context, they will be able to empathize with others better. This in turn can lead to feeling more connected with others, and thus less isolated and lonely. Moreover, the ability to understand others better and cultivate a caring attitude towards others parallels the same process of understanding and caring for themselves better.
The overarching theme of this chapter is therefore compassion and self-compassion. Dr. Thupten Jinpa, a noted scholar on compassion, defines compassion as “a sense of concern that arises when we are confronted with another person’s suffering and feel motivated to see that suffering relieved.”1 Compassion therefore depends on awareness of the other’s situation and an ability to empathize with them, combined with a sense of affection or endearment towards that person. These qualities are also important for self-compassion. Psychologist Dr. Kristin Neff, one of the world’s leading experts on the topic, writes that self-compassion means being “kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings.”2 It is important to help young students explore self-compassion, because they are just entering a stage in life where they will be increasingly evaluated in numerous ways by their teachers, their parents and guardians, and their peers. It is therefore critical that they learn that any setbacks they encounter in learning or in life do not reflect any lack of personal worth on their part, but can serve as learning experiences for their future development.
1 Jinpa, Thupten. A Fearless Heart: How the courage to be compassionate can transform our lives (Avery, 2016), xx.
2 https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/