Have you noticed that compassion and basic humanity have become scarce commodities in our society?.

It’s appalling to see the behavior of politicians,who are willing to mock, humiliate, demonize or deliberately provoke others if it serves a political purpose. Cruelty gets applauded as strength. Insults are treated as entertainment. Empathy is dismissed as weakness.

Less than helpful responses to tragedy

Look at the way people respond to tragedy, too. Let’s take Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three young children and then attempted to take her own life. Whatever we believe about what happened, the circumstances surrounding that tragedy are profoundly disturbing and heartbreaking. There are serious mental health implications.

Yet the public conversation has often included horrific amounts of judgment, contempt and certainty about a person and a situation most of us could never fully understand from the outside. Even though so many of us think we DO understand it.

Look. I’m not saying we excuse terrible actions. Compassion does not require us to erase accountability. Humanity does not mean pretending that terrible things don’t happen.

Consider the humanity. Choose compassion.

It means remembering that there is a human being behind the headline.

It means being careful before we condemn. It means resisting the temptation to turn someone’s worst moment into a spectacle or someone’s suffering into political ammunition. It means we do not call for public hanging.

We are not psychologists. We are not experts at human dysfunction. Why do we behave as though we are?

We Americans are becoming very good at choosing sides and very bad at seeing people.

Perhaps compassion begins with this simple step: before we speak, before we judge, before we pile on, pause long enough to remember that the person in front of us is human—and so are we.

So are we.