Making Time for Compassion

I'm behind my usual goal of two books every two weeks (one at home and one in class). Early in the semester, there are so many little details to take care of - collecting syllabus, learning names, establishing routines - that it cuts into my class reading time.  Hopefully I will finish both books by the end of next week and be back on track.  My quality goal has shifted to reading the books we bought with our nonfiction grant - nine total.  Once I finish these two, I'll have four to go, so I'm hoping to have all nine finished before the end of the nine weeks with a possible break in between to read something more light-hearted and fictional.

When we read Of Mice and Men, we gloss over the time period a bit more than I'd like.  Sure, we all know it was written during the Great Depression and those were hard times, but it seems so long ago and far away, and we have a difficult time not placing our present day lens on anything we read. So we consider George's act of killing his friend through a contemporary lens, a time when we have a more accepting attitude of people with mental challenges, and we are horrified by Carlson shooting Candy's dog because we live in a time when animal cruelty is a criminal charge.  Through our modern eyes, compassion is possible, easy even, because most of us have plenty, and we feel sympathy for those with some sort of lack. When comparing our time with Steinbeck's time, I begin to wonder if compassion is a luxury, something we dole out like our cash because we can afford to. For people living in more treacherous circumstances, compassion for others costs more.  It takes energy needed to face another day.  It costs the dollar one might need for the next meal.  Yet compassion does happen in hard places and impossible circumstances, and maybe it means even more in those situations. One of the greatest adversities anyone can confront is war, and compassion in times of war represents an act of true service.

Thank You for Your Service examines the problems confronted by contemporary veterans, especially those suffering from emotional trauma after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Anyone following the current election cycle knows that concern for our vets serves as a major talking point (i.e. political  rallying cry) for many politicians.  They hold rallies to raise money for them, they speak about protecting them, they promise to provide for them.  But some of these candidates are current members of Congress, and if they are so concerned, why have they not introduced legislation to improve the services provided?  Claiming we have compassion is not the same as acting on that compassion.  Throughout the book, David Finkel shares stories about several people directly affected by the current crisis, including the man charged with finding solutions to the problem of emotional distress suffered by soldiers, the U.S. Army vice chief of staff, General Peter Chiarelli. Chiarelli himself served in Iraq as a division commander, and while there, he lost 169 soldiers. Every time he lost a soldier, "he wrote their names and hometowns on index cards that he carried in his pocket until there were too many left to fit. He attended all of the memorial services and wrote 169 condolence letters in 365 days" (73). Chiarelli took the time to keep a record, to honor each man, and to literally carry that memory with him.  Such an act of compassion undoubtedly weighed on him instead of alleviating the losses, but he took the time because even in war, his humanity remained intact, his love for his fellow soldiers still informed his actions.  Chiarelli now heads a task force seeking specifically to figure out why so many veterans commit suicide.  Day after day he listens to exacting, heartbreaking reports of another lost soldier, yet he returns because his compassion drives him to find solutions.  Compassion for some is not a luxury, but a calling, and we are lucky to have people in our military who choose not just to perform acts of pride and patriotism, but also concerned acts of compassion.