ARTIST. GRIOT. ACTIVIST

I read the comments before I read the article.

A public figure’s health had become uncertain, and beneath the headline was a chorus of celebration. There was no concern. No pause. No recognition that somewhere behind the title, the office, the decades of political battles, was a human body failing in the way every human body eventually does.

I don’t share many of his political views. I haven’t admired much of his public life. But none of that prepared me for my own discomfort as I scrolled through the replies.

It wasn’t his illness that unsettled me.

It was ours.

I found myself wondering when another person’s humanity became conditional. When did compassion become something we extend only to people who vote like us, think like us, or affirm our beliefs? At what point did disagreement become sufficient reason to celebrate suffering?

I don’t ask these questions to defend a politician.

I ask them because one day, each of us will disappoint someone. Each of us will be misunderstood by someone. Each of us will be judged by the least generous interpretation of our lives.

What kind of world are we building if compassion is reserved only for those who never lose our approval?

There are emotions that visit us, and there are emotions we invite to stay.

Every day, often without noticing, we decide which ones will furnish the rooms of our inner lives. Compassion or contempt. Mercy or vengeance. Curiosity or certainty. They arrive as fleeting feelings, but they become habits. Habits become character. Character quietly shapes the society we leave behind.

I think about this most when I watch public life unfold.

Someone whose ideas or actions have caused real harm falls ill. Someone faces tragedy. Someone approaches death. And suddenly the celebration begins. The comments fill with applause, jokes, and declarations that the world is becoming a better place.

The reasoning is familiar: They deserve it.

Perhaps they have said cruel things. Perhaps they have done genuine harm. Perhaps they have earned accountability. But since when did accountability require us to abandon our humanity?

At what point did compassion become something reserved only for people we approve of?

There is a quiet danger in believing that another person’s flaws give us permission to surrender our own values. The moment we delight in another person’s suffering, we have allowed them to dictate who we become. We tell ourselves we are standing against cruelty while practicing a version of it.

This is not an argument against justice. Justice matters. Consequences matter. Harm should be named and addressed.

But justice and cruelty are not synonyms.

A society is not healed because different people take turns celebrating each other’s pain. An eye for an eye has never restored anyone’s sight. It has only multiplied the darkness.

The measure of our character is not found in how we treat those we admire. It is revealed in what we do with those who disappoint us, anger us, or even disgust us.

If we hope for a more decent world, then decency cannot be conditional. Otherwise, we are simply asking for our tribe to hold the power instead of theirs.

The question is not whether they deserve compassion.

The question is whether I am willing to become less compassionate in order to condemn someone else’s lack of compassion.

Because if hatred is contagious, then so is mercy.

And every day, whether we notice it or not, we choose which one gets to live in us.

Peace Begins With Me.

©Naan Pocen