someone sitting next to your seat, its ok, because thats in the theater, but if you were sitting in the park, and someone would sat that close you, you would freak out. what do they want from me? who's that? and so you wouldnt sit that close to the another person. because of your notion that its you versus the universe, because that cosmic basic idea, that it is us, all alone, each of us, and everyone else is different, then that puts us into impossible situation. who is it, that is gonna get enough attention from the world? who is gonna get enough out of the world? who is not gonna be overrun by other beings. so where compassion comes is where you suprisingly discover, you lose yourself in some way, to art, to meditation, to understanding, to knowledge, knowing that you have no such boundary, knowing that you are interconnected with other beings, you can experience self, as other beings, when you see through the delusion of being separated from them. and when you do that, you are forced to feel what they feel. luckily, they say that when you reach that point.. because some people have said, oh who would want to be compassionate, how awful, i'm enough miserable on my own, my head is aching, my bones are aching, i go from birth to death, never satisfied, i never have enough, even if i have a bilion, i dont have enough, i need a hundred bilion, and imagine i if i had to feel even a hundred other people's suffering, it would be terrible. but apparently, this is a strange paradox of life. when you are no longer locked in yourself, somehow by that opening, you can see the deeper nature of life. when we are relieved from that, we somehow become interested in all the other beings, and we feel ourselves differently, its totally strange. the dalai lama was saying, when you get birth in your mind to the idea of compassion, because you realise that you yourself and your pains and pleasures are finally too small of a theater for your intelligence, boring, whether you feel like this or feel like that, or what. and more you focus on how you feel, the worse it gets. even when you are having a good time, when is the good time over? the good time is over, when you think: how is it? and then its never good enough.

what good is it to being miserable with other's misery? you have to find some vision, where you see how hopeful it is, how it can be changed.

so the first person who gets happy, when you stop focusing on the self-centered situation of how happy am i, where you are never satisfied.. you will never get satisfaction that way, so then you decide, well i'm sick of myself, i'm gonna think of how other people can be happy, i'm gonna get up in the morning and think about how can i save even one another person, even a dog, my dog, my cat, my pet, my butterfly. and the first person that gets happy when you do that, you are not doing anything for anybody else, but you get happier, you yourself, because your whole perception broadens, and you suddenly see the whole world and all the people in it, and you realise how good is this being with these people.

[ted, thurman, 2007]