The Lost Art of Compassion

"We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity." — Charlie Chaplin

He had been standing nearby while I spoke with the police officers — watching, hands in his pockets, a faint smile as though remembering something distant. When we finished, he walked toward me, unhurried.

“I’m off to Spain this afternoon,” he said, his voice steady and light, “but I’ve got time. I like to share what I’ve learned.”

He was in his seventies, his frame lean and upright, hair as white as winter sunlight. There was vitality in him — not forced, but renewed. He mentioned his new stents almost casually, tapping his chest once, smiling. “They’ve given me a second wind,” he said. “Strange, how you start to see everything more clearly when your heart’s been opened.”

We walked with him for a while. He spoke softly, but with a presence that quieted the noise around us. “You know,” he said, “I saw something a few weeks ago I can’t forget. An old lady fell on the high street — face down. The man behind her, eyes on his phone, just stepped over her and kept walking.”

His words hung there, carried by disbelief rather than anger. “We helped her up,” he said. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. We’ve become spectators in each other’s lives. Everyone’s rushing, everyone’s somewhere else.”

He looked ahead as he spoke, as though watching the thought unfold across the pavement. “Compassion used to be ordinary,” he murmured. “Now it’s treated like an achievement.”

There was no cynicism in his tone, only quiet sorrow. Yet underneath it — a pulse of hope. “Maybe it takes a shock,” he said, “a new stent, a scare, something that slows you down — to see how much we’ve lost, and how much there still is to save.”

We reached the end of the street, where the light turned softer, more golden. He smiled then — a smile that seemed to carry both gratitude and warning. “Spain will be nice,” he said. “But moments like this — talking, really talking — they remind me what keeps the heart working.”

He adjusted his jacket, nodded once, and walked away — white hair catching the sun, steps light but certain. I watched until he disappeared around the corner, the echo of his words still moving quietly through the air.