Living a Compassionate Life

The simple answer about why community service is important is that it shows compassion. But interestingly, community service is not the only way to show compassion. In the first paragraph I already tricked you into focusing on community service, when in reality, you should be focusing on compassion to improve your college admissions chances, and opportunities in life. 

Community service is just one way to show compassion. You can also show compassion by playing music, or researching a cure for a disease, or simply solving a problem someone has. See how easy it is to forget about other options to show compassion if you’re “just” focusing on community service? And even if you are performing community service, maybe you’re not doing it in a way that truly shows compassion. And believe me, a lot of people fall into this trap.

According to Merriam-Webster, compassion is the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Notice two points here, the first point is the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress.” The second is the “desire to alleviate it.” Both concepts are important in this post.

The first point means that you are able to see important realities in what is happening in the world. And the truth is that the world is filled with problems! From environmental damage, to poverty, to political crises, the list goes on. There are millions of problems, big and small. If you cannot see the problems in front of you, how can you even have a chance at solving them?

Another reason why the first point is important is because if you can recognize reality, and see problems, then you also have the opportunity to do something to fix it. With a simple flip of perspective, you are already more empowered to make the world better. Problems = opportunity to solve problems. It’s that simple.

This is why the second concept also matters. You might be able to see problems, and recognize the opportunity, but what if you don’t do anything about it? Maybe you don’t care, don’t want to try, or something else. 

Now think from a college’s perspective. Why would they admit someone who either cannot recognize real problems or does nothing to solve problems? 

The world has too many problems. What colleges want, are people who have the compassion and ability to solve some of these problems and therefore make the world just a little bit better. If you can focus on building compassion in your life, I can almost guarantee that you’ll not only improve your college admission chances, but also improve your opportunities in life and make the world a bit better at the same time.