We all have them from time to time. We’ll be sitting quietly and bam; we’re hit with a sudden profound realization that quite possibly changes forever how we look at the world. Or maybe they are not quite that dramatic. The cause can be something unexpected in a comedian’s routine or a Hallmark card commercial on television. I say this to illustrate that it isn’t necessarily important what engenders the moment.

I’ve experienced a small amount of … shame … over my addiction to anything sci-fi for most of my life. I was born in 1952, when there wasn’t much interest in science fiction in the general public and females mostly were not supposed to be interested in it at all. Luckily that has all changed quite a bit.

Some time ago, my husband, Bernd, and I watched the movie I Robot for the … well, I don’t exactly know how many times we’ve watched it. Certainly more than three times and less than a hundred. There is a part in the story where the character Dr. Calvin must carry out the order to decommission a particular robot, named Sonny by his maker. Sonny had been given two positronic brains and so he possessed the “three laws of robotics,” but could choose to ignore them. His maker had also been teaching Sonny human emotions.

Dr. Calvin is preparing the syringe of nanites that will disrupt Sonny’s neural pathways when Sonny asks if it will hurt. He makes it plain to Dr. Calvin that he does not want to die and is afraid. She takes Sonny’s hand in hers and says that she is sorry and expressed compassion for his plight (spoiler … she didn’t actually do it). It was just then that the feeling I had just witnessed something profound rolled right through me and I missed some of what happened next.

I wish that I could convey all the feelings and thoughts that came over me in that moment. Several thoughts occurred to me all at once and I felt that I had realized something amazing even though I’d seen that scene many times before.

To be compassionate is to make no distinction in where our love and caring is placed or given. To be compassionate seems to me to be the essence of being human. It defines us … our capacity to care beyond ourselves. I was overcome by an extreme feeling of love for all of humankind that we could share ourselves in this way.

In reality, it’s only a story. And the robot was human-form, still it was a machine; made by a man to serve humankind. Yet Dr. Calvin comforted him just as she would another human being.

Sometimes when I look at our cat, Miss Fuzzy Pants, or our dog, Maddie, I don’t exactly see a cat or a dog. I’m not sure I could describe what it is that I perceive, but for sure it is a person looking back at me. I wonder what it is they see when they look at me. I joke that I am that funny looking, tailless cat or dog, way too large, walking on only two legs and possessing no decent fur to speak of that brings them food and caresses and love. But really, I do sometimes wonder how I fit into their world.

They are not at all like me, but that doesn’t stop me feeling compassion for them or giving them my love and care. It is such an easy thing to do. They have no egos to get in the way or conflict with ours. And they are always truthful.

So then why do we seemingly find it so hard to have compassion for humans of different cultures when they have so much more in common with us than robots might or animals do? If compassion defines us and we act without compassion toward other human beings, what does that make us?

That’s my thought for the day.

Photos courtesy of St. Petersburg College Blogs and Brimmings, respectively