Another day, another succinct definition from Frederick Buechner:
Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. — Frederick Buechner 1
1 Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 65.