Has this ever happened to you? While driving down the road in your car, you spy an individual who has jay-walked standing on the two yellow lines in the center of the road. You think: “My God. This person is in danger!” So you slow down and check your rear view mirror to make sure that the car behind you isn’t going to come on too strong.

But then, the person on the yellow lines glares at you and waves you on faster, as if to say, “No, no, no, keep coming. You are screwing up my exquisite timing!”

Oh. I shouldn’t have cared as much. I should have hogged the road.

It’s as though the world wants us all to play tough. It’s as though compassion is not appropriate anymore.

When you use compassion, aren’t you saying, “I’m not going to play this tough game?”

If you do, though, you run the risk that someone may glare at you, or hit you in the rear.

It’s hard to maintain compassion sometimes, knowing that risk. But then I remember that meditation teacher and spiritual thinker Sharon Salzberg speaks eloquently on the subject of compassion as an act of courage. Here is a link to a phenomenal speech she gave last February at Washington’s National Cathedral. It’s posted on the cathedral’s “Sacred Circles” website page with three other remarkable speeches. Each address runs at least 30 minutes, so listen when you have the time. Or look now and then come back later. Sharon and author Marianne Williamson, who was also present, were especially forceful on the subject of compassion and the courage we must sustain to remain big-hearted.