Compassion is not a social facade. Compassion is not a sham designed to mask our essential self–centeredness. Compassion is the emotion that links us to those outside ourselves. It is the capacity for outreach. It enables us, it drives us, to go beyond ourselves to the beating pulse of the rest of the world. Compassion, then, is a dimension of what it means to be fully human.
There is one thing that we are certain about and that is that we are surrounded by a profound mystery. And in some strange way we are asked to participate in this mystery and to collaborate with it.