Margaret Mead, one of the most prominent anthropologists of her time, was asked what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. Her answer was surprisingly simple and straightforward: a broken femur that has healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if an animal breaks its leg, it is unlikely to survive for long. Without the ability to run, hunt, or even drink water, the broken leg becomes a death sentence. However, in ancient cultures, a healed broken femur was evidence that someone had taken care of the injured individual. They had stayed with them, tended their wounds, and helped them recover.
This small act of kindness and compassion was, according to Mead, the first sign of civilization. It marked a shift in how people related to one another and signaled the beginning of a society built on cooperation and mutual support.
Fast forward to today, and we can see the importance of compassion in our daily lives. Whether it's helping a friend in need or volunteering at a local charity, acts of compassion help to build stronger communities and create a more interconnected world. In fact, one of the most surefire ways to increase your own well-being is to engage in compassion and reach out to help those around you. Tons of research points to this being true.
However, despite its many benefits, compassion can be difficult to cultivate and maintain. In our fast-paced, individualistic society, we can become so focused on our own lives and goals that we forget the importance of caring for others. We often have a map in our mind that we are ‘here’ right now and we are on our way to ‘there,’ and there is something that could be an obstacle in our way. In this never-ending mental preparation to face obstacles, we effectively reduce our sense of self to a very limited, wimpy self-focused self. A fascinating study was done at Princeton that highlights this phenomenon.
As the Princeton Good Samaritan experiment demonstrates, our ability to feel compassion is often hindered by our own self-interest, fear, and time constraints. Conducted in 1973 by social psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson, studied the behavior of seminary (theology) students in helping others in need. The students were asked to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan and then were randomly assigned to either a hurried or unhurried condition. On their way to deliver the sermon, they encountered a man in distress. The results showed that only 10% of the seminary students in the hurried condition stopped to help while 63% of the participants in the unhurried condition did. The experiment concluded that being in a hurry can prevent even those with the intention to help, like seminary students, from assisting someone in need.
So if it was tough even for students wanting to help people to stop when they were restricted for time, no wonder our current modern life conditions make it feel like a very forceful headwind! It’s only when we can become aware of the fact that we’re getting stuck in this limiting sense of scarcity— whether that is time or resources, we can then make the decision to shift our mindset toward more openness and abundance. When we can avoid getting stuck worrying about what obstacles might be waiting for us around the bend, we can be more present for our life and for friends, family members, or even strangers who might benefit from our compassion.
And how does this relate to college admissions and the transition to college life? Well, it's important to note that colleges are not just looking for academic robots. They want well-rounded individuals who demonstrate qualities beyond their academic achievements. In fact, Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project, which provides resources for colleges to assess character traits, recommends that a key non-cognitive quality that admissions offices should look for in applicants is compassion. While it’s simple, it’s not necessarily easy. The good news is that much like concentration, focus, and awareness, compassion is also a learnable and growable skill set. More on toning that compassion muscle another time!