This piece is a response narrative for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call.  It was inspired by this Autofictional seed. For this call, we asked people to write a response to another author’s autofictional submission, based on the original piece and this bit of cryptic world lore.

This, and other Worldbuilding pieces are being published to a Wiki, which will allow contributors to edit, link, and otherwise annotate their work and that of their peers.

Against Compassion

There is a chasm deepening between how I think people perceive me and how I am. There was a time when I could acquiesce to a Zebra spider in my space but not now. My need to confess this discrepancy, or at least acknowledge it, seems to be growing. I’m thinking of the character “Boo” in To Kill a Mockingbird. His reputation was as an ogre who stayed behind closed doors except to run off pesky kids, but he turned out to be sensitive, compassionate and misunderstood. I’m the opposite, or at least moving in that direction. I evidently appear approachable and compassionate, but if another person asks me to do something for them, if another person needs me to take care of them, I might run screaming back to my house. Like insidious rising sea level fueled by global warming, I’m noticing an increasing hypocrisy in my outward reactions to situations that deserve more empathy and compassion than I have available.

For example, my neighbor, Sondra, living across the street for thirty plus years, recently sent an email around to a circle of friends saying that her husband was now in a nursing home because he cannot breathe on his own without mechanically delivered oxygen. He suffered severe bouts of pneumonia and other respiratory ailments in the last few years and now his requirement for care and oxygen became too much for her to deal with. I told her that I would visit Alex in the nursing home soon. But, instead, using the excuse that it’s raining, I’m sitting here at home contemplating my compassion insufficiency. I seem to be acknowledging – at least secretly – that it’s difficult and depressing to be at the bedside of very sick people and that I don’t want to go to see Alex. Rather than improving with age, I’m getting worse. Just in time for multitudes of boomers to be sicker, develop dementia and become needier than ever, I’m running low on distress tolerance and motivation to care. I might be more judgmental, too. That leaves only three remaining elements of compassion – sensitivity, sympathy, empathy – and those could be waning. Are those enough?

I’m more cynical, too. At a local church holiday sale last December, I wandered through the area normally used as a Sunday School, transformed into a holiday market of Christmas decorations, quilting supplies, books, white elephant stuff, jewelry and rows of red Poinsettias in paper sleeves ready to go. The sellers seemed cheerful enough, but I didn’t feel my old urge to look for a bargain or find something with a bird theme that would be the perfect whimsical present for my bird lover friends. I didn’t start to enjoy myself until I was snagged in the silent auction area by an acquaintance who immediately started complaining about how much time she had spent organizing and pricing all this stuff.

“And then some people have the gall to tell me it’s too expensive! “ She said as she tidied up a pile of knitted potholders recently explored by an unchaperoned four-year-old.

I wanted to ask, “Why the heck are you volunteering to do all this if it’s so awful?”

But, I didn’t. I know she’s a good citizen who does this because she loves God and country and possibly fears that the church would actually fall down without her. I used to do these things too, but now it seems boring and without purpose. I’m still giving “time, talent and treasure” as a board member for a couple of local organizations that specialize in good deeds. And I’m supporting an orphan in Haiti and I’ve sponsored two illegal immigrants who are now American citizens with productive careers in this country.

Perhaps I’m losing the desire to be a productive “contributing” member of society. All I want to do these days is to read and write. And what would a community or village be like if everyone was like me? Similar to a monastery or a nudist colony? Somehow I don’t imagine people practicing philanthropy in nudist colonies. They might contribute to the weekly potluck but I don’t imagine them being community helpers except for, hopefully, sharing their sunscreen. Monks, on the other hand, have been known to provide sanctuary for endangered people.

This morning I accompanied my neighbor, Sondra, to our local funeral home to discuss how much their services will cost when Alex dies. When she called to ask me to go with her, she described how confused and worried she felt. She said Alex wants to be cremated, but she’s never had anything to do with cremation because it’s taboo in the Jewish faith. She called on me, she said, because she has attended several of the funerals of my family members over the years and considers me an expert.

She concluded with: “Everyone knows how much you help people with all kinds of things.”

I felt both complimented and repulsed by her invitation. The attraction was mainly curiosity. Sondra expresses herself, verbally, in an unusual way and it would be interesting to see how she explains her and Alex’ wishes to the funeral director.

She confided on the way over to the home that funeral expense is a big concern. She said a friend was recently buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in New York and the funeral and internment cost over $40,000. Sondra’s conversation, as we walked down the street towards the funeral parlor, was a stream of consciousness flitting from meeting Alex for the first time thirty-five years ago in the waiting room of a car dealership to the challenge of taking her Siamese kittens to be spayed last week without him because he’s in a nursing home, and back to, “Alex and I were millionaires twice but we lost it all in the stock market. We can’t afford an expensive funeral. When we met while having our cars repaired he was handsome and kind and he invited me to lunch and we discovered we both liked cats.”

They married two months after their first date and eventually bought the house across the street from me. Over the years they have been friendly neighbors. I knew Alex was just teasing when he insisted that I cut down a large pine tree in my yard that blocked their view of the river. I didn’t do it and we stayed on good terms anyway, even while other neighbors complained that they were becoming more and more “strange.” Alex once accused the adolescent daughter of their next-door neighbor of tapping into his internet and stealing energy, causing his own computer to be slow. He photographed the three teenage boys who live next to me (across the street from him) as they lounged in their own yard smoking cigarettes. He said he was saving the photo for them as evidence when they all developed lung cancer. Perhaps Alex is the compassionate one. He should get bonus points for that one.

I like people who are unusual – even peculiar – as long as they seem to have good intentions. Lately, my response to people with problems is laced with an ulterior motive; they have to be interesting – both the people and the problem.

(This caveat could be a sign that I’m not ready to abandon compassion.)

I know that I will go and see Alex in the nursing home and I will feel genuinely sad that this quirky man, the son of a country doctor in Maine, is now facing months or possibly years as a patient in an unpleasant institution. And here’s another sign of my ambivalence: I responded generously when Sondra lamented that she didn’t think they could afford to buy a burial plot at Elm Grove Cemetery.

“And that’s where Alex wants to be,” she said.

I had an immediate need to make her feel better and told her she could have a couple of the many plots my mother bought at Elm Grove in 1981 when my father died. My mother was an optimist assuming that everyone in the family wanted to be together for eternity and bought an entire condo complex with room for eight.

When we arrived for the meeting, Sondra announced to the funeral director that everything was going to be okay. They were going to be buried with the Whipples. On our way home afterwards, Sondra told me how helpful I had been and how relieved she felt to know that there was room for them with my family at Elm Grove.

The literal meaning of compassion is “to suffer together” and I had momentarily relieved my suffering, my need to respond and solve her problem, by offering a small piece of property (about which I have ambivalent feelings – the property, that is.) I’m at an age where I can no longer glance casually at the cemetery when I pass by. When I go to water the flowers at my family plot, I’m often calculating the ages of our neighbors based on tombstone datum.

Life expectancy has dropped in the U.S. since 2022, for women, down to 77.28 years. I could move to Japan where it is 84.62 years and get an immediate bonus but I think I’ll stay put and hope that the actuarial tables change. If I make it all the way to 105, life expectancy goes way up after that. But that is mitigated by height. I’m already too short at 5’4” since the odds of making it to 90 are improved by being taller than 5’9”. The good news is that life satisfaction is higher in my current age bracket than for youngsters 60 – 64 years.

But are life satisfaction and compassion compatible? Mother Theresa seemed to have suffered throughout her career from doubts about her faith in spite of her generous compassion. She also belonged to an order, the Sisters of Charity, who practiced self-flagellation, at least at the novitiate stage. As a confirmed hedonist, I admire her level of compassion but will keep boundaries around my self-interrogation. She did live to age 87, though.

Perhaps “boundaries” is the word I’m looking for. My acts of compassion are not related to a need to emulate Jesus or secure a spot in some heavenly realm. I simply hate to see people – and animals – suffer probably because I grew up with parents who were the village problem-solvers. Can we reign in compassion and feel good about ourselves at the same time?

Alex lived several more months and when he died Sondra learned that he had two secret bank accounts. Not only was she able to buy her own duplex plot at Elm Grove but she added a granite bench so she’ll have a place to rest and talk with Alex while she’s still above ground. She offered to talk with my family, too, since she, “won’t have that much to do while sitting with Alex.”

For now, Sondra is doing fine, enjoying her cats, and doesn’t require a lot of compassion from my side of the street. I’ve taken her off my “needs attention” list and will try to leave her spot blank. Or, maybe I’ll put Mother Earth in her place and economize by taking care of everyone at the same time by reducing my carbon footprint.

People retire, writers revise.

A revision of my life will require careful assessment of what I take on in terms of the problems of others. How do my choices fit into the relatively small time I have in front of me on the planet? Based on my height, I’ve got to maximize my pleasure and satisfaction within the next 10 – 15 years – unless I make it to 105.