Compassion - Oscar Bamwebaze
There Is No Happiness Without Compassion
Therefore, to love my neighbor is to love myself, and to love myself is to love my neighbor. By this definition, my neighbor is every living and non living thing in this life. What I do to others is what they will do to me, and what I do to myself is what I will do to others. I get from life what I put into it.
The Healing Power Of Self love (P. 176)
It was close to midnight and all I wanted to do was get to bed and rest. I had had a very long and tiring day. But shortly before I could switch off my lights, I was rattled by the thumping sounds of a barrage of kicks, slaps, and punches, which emanated from outside our walled up enclosure. My heart rammed heavily against my rib cage, because I knew at once that someone was being beaten. It eventually became clear to me that an angry husband was battering his feeble bodied wife.
I peeped through my window and could se the angry husband reap off a branch from an Avocado tree in a nearby banana plantation. He then thrashed and flogged his helpless wife until she screamed out for help at the top of her muffled voice. This woman was right in the middle of a densely populated residential area, but everyone who heard her chilly cries just closed their doors and drew their curtains!
I stepped out of my room to intervene in the situation, and that is when I spotted the nearly lifeless body of the battered wife crawling desperately into our compound. “Help me!” she cried out, “my husband is killing me!” I could see her husband closing in one her. He was as huge as a buffalo, and because of his massive size, I froze still in fear.
My other neighbors came out of their tiny rooms to witness what was happening, and quickly withdrew into the safety of their rooms, shutting their doors behind them. The terrified woman gathered enough energy to dash off into a bachelor’s room. He was seated inside watching a football match on his TV. “Help me sir!”, she cried out, her body smeared in blood stains. The bachelor got up casually from his seat, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her out of his room and back into the courtyard where her angry husband was waiting to finish her off.
I warned her husband not to beat her, and I threatened him that I would call the police. But he took one look at me and figured out that I was no threat to him. He grabbed his almost lifeless wife and began to kick, flog and slap her. She managed to wriggle herself free from his grip and tried to dash into my room for safety. Barely had she made it passed the threshold of my door when he caught up with her and began to beat her again.
I now became determined to stop this man and I sought the assistance of my neighbor. He took one look at the dying woman and replied nonchalantly, “Ah! Those two are just in love.” But after I insisted that we had to restrain the man from killing his wife, he agreed to intervene. The angry man stopped beating his wife when he was confronted by the two of us. We calmed him down, and advised his wife to flee to the nearest police station. I also advised her to divorce her abusive husband.
We walked with the angry man right up to his room, as a way of ensuring that he didn’t beat up his wife again. But a few minutes later, his battered wife popped up from a nearby banana plantation and stood right next to him, in a seemingly romantic manner!
“I told you guys,” bellowed out the angry man “that this woman can never leave me alone however much I beat her up or chase her away.”
“That’s not our problem,” I replied the angry man, “As far as we are concerned, you will be arrested the next time you beat up your wife.” Fortunately, we were able to force the woman to pack up her bags and get lost, because we didn’t want her to die.
The very next day, on my way home from work, I met an eight year old child dragging a five year old child on the highway, amidst blows, kicks, slaps and verbal abuses. This young boy was doing to his brother exactly what the angry man had done to his wife the previous day. There was a group of men and women standing across the highway, but they did nothing to intervene. The five year old boy had been crying for several minutes before I was able to reach him and rescue him from his abusive brother.
These two incidents have baffled me because I can not understand why normal human beings would refuse to come to the rescue of a dying person. Psychologists call such inhumane behavior ‘learned helplessness’, but it could also be a form of antisocial personality behavior.
What these people do not realize is that we are all interconnected by some invisible thread, and the injuries inflicted upon other people, are in reality inflicted upon us. When we choose not to come to the rescue of those who are suffering, we suffer too. We are suffering today because we either abused someone yesterday, refused to prevent someone from being abused, or because we were abused and no one did anything to help us.
All the people in my neighborhood, who chose not to help the dying woman and the crying child, are all poor and unhappy. I guess God has no reason to take them out of their misery.
One of the women in my neighborhood has always been mean and hard hearted towards everyone in her life, but most especially children. For the last few months however, her life has been a nightmare- she was battered by her unfaithful husband, is financially insecure, has ‘incurable health problems’, suffered a terrible accident, and has been abandoned by her friends.
I used to have a very mean employer who was rude and unkind towards our clients and their families. He eventually got fired, his children are all suffering from chronic illnesses, his mother is blind, he is in a very poor state of health, he has no friends left, and he is poverty stricken.
A friend of mine recently cut off the ear lobe of a petty thief right in the middle of his supermarket in broad day light! He had caught the thief trying to steal 7 light bulbs! His employees pleaded with him not to butcher the thief, but their cries fell on deaf ears. I spoke to the supermarket owner a few minutes after he had chopped off the thief’s ear lobe, but he couldn’t even utter a single word in response. He appeared to be in a trance like state, and it was quite obvious that he was traumatized by his own brutality. Since then, everyone who has heard about that incident has sworn never to go back to his supermarket. He is always in a depressed mood, and will eventually make heavy losses this year, just because he acted cruelly towards a thief.
One of my former schoolmates was not necessarily mean towards others, but was intrinsically selfish and self centered. She could never reach out to help other people. Today she is a single mother who is obsessed with the need for a husband, but every man who falls in love with her, quickly dumps her. She is a lone wolf, deserted by all her friends. She can’t hold the same job for long, and never makes new friends on her new jobs. She is forever praying and fasting, but God won’t listen to her because of her selfishness.
Fr. Damien Grimes (a white father), the founder of Namasagali College, physically and sexually abused his students for several decades, (I was one of his victims). He was above the laws of the country because of his political connections, and he could not therefore be charged with these crimes. But as the times changed, he was forcefully evicted from the school he founded by his former students who had become rich and powerful. For more than a decade now, he has been unemployed, broke, sick, lonely, and even abandoned by his fellow clergy in the Catholic church. There is no doubt that he will die a sad and painful death.
There is a teacher who used to abuse the orphans under my care, and the last time I confronted him about his criminal behavior, he ridiculed me. Today, just two months later, he is on his death bed suffering from an incurable illness, and his students are praying that he dies a painful death! He is unlikely to survive.
There was a man who was very mean to us when we were working in Asia. Because of his selfishness and self centeredness, he worked very hard to character assassinate all of us. He was eventually isolated by all his colleagues and life because so unbearable for him in Asia, he had no option but to return to his country. Since then, he has been unhappy- his marriage is ‘on the rocks’, he is hated by his family, he is unemployed, suffers from several chronic illnesses, and is perpetually depressed.
The founder of one of Uganda’s largest and oldest orphanages was very abusive towards her employees and the orphans under her care. I worked for her for six months and never got pain a penny! For the last decade, she has been unemployed and crippled mentally by a strange disease. Abandoned by all her friends, family, and the orphans who grew up under her care, she lives a very lonely and painful life. Surviving off handouts, she must beg for every single thing she wants, even pampers! The people taking care of her now abuse her, in much the same way that she once abused others!
These are just a few of the cases that I have known. Whether we like it or not, much of our pain and suffering has a lot to do with how we treat other people. There can be no happiness without compassion. Each time we abuse someone, we abuse ourselves; each time we refuse to help someone who is suffering, we too suffer; and each time we become obsessed with our own needs at the expense of others, we become miserable. We are all one and the same person.
back to blogs
