What Can We Learn About Compassion From The Who at Woodstock?

Fifty years ago, while the original Woodstock festival was in full swing, my 11-year-old friends and I were cocooning in the safe environs of summer camp. Just a month earlier, we were treated to a late night gathering around a little black and white TV to witness the monumental leap for mankind, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. That summer, the album Tommy dominated our psyches.

Today, through the lens of compassion, Pete Townsend’s iconic rock opera offers many moments for reflection. I recently listened again as #woodstock50 rolled around, and noticed lyrics that illuminated the path to compassion. (And it is not surprising to learn that Townsend had recently taken a spiritual mentor, Meher Baba (Compassionate Father) and thanked him with a credit in the record's gatefold.)

See me.
Feel me.
Touch me.
Heal me.

These familiar lyrics from Tommy align perfectly with the compassionate path from awareness, to empathy, to compassionate action, to transformation.

Renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield explained the difference between empathy and compassion on Episode #300 of the prolific The Tim Ferris Show podcast.

“I would like to distinguish compassion from empathy. And I’ll use a simple illustration. If you’re on the playground and you see a kid being bullied, and you feel, oh, that must feel terrible, that hurts, that’s empathy. And empathy can be useful... You can get overwhelmed by empathy if you don’t know what to do with it. But there’s some way in which you start to feel it resonate in you because we are not limited to these bodies. We are actually an interconnected system of consciousness…

But we all know, whether it’s mirror neurons from neuroscience, or the field of presence, as neuroscientists like Dan Siegel talk about, extended presence, we can feel empathy with one another when someone’s sad and someone’s angry, someone’s hurting.

Compassion is the next step. You see or recognize, you feel, and then you care. You care about it, and you want to, if you can, do something that helps. So, if you see a kid being bullied and you realize, I want to tell the teacher or the principal, or I want to just walk over there and say something or intervene to help stop it. And so, compassion…”

At the Center for Compassionate Leadership, we developed a useful equation to provide more clarity on the often-confusing distinction between empathy and compassion.

Awareness + Connection + Empathy + Intentional Action = Compassion

We all have the capacity to act and lead with compassion. It’s an innate quality for all humans, and we can easily bring it back to the forefront with attention, practice, love, and kindness.

Bobbi Ercoline, the women featured on the cover of the Woodstock album, sums it up well in a recent interview on CBS Sunday Morning (Aug 4, 2019). “Peace among chaos. I think the picture is a reflection of hope. That no matter how bad or uncomfortable the situation may be, with love and kindness, there is always hope.”