humanity

As a society, we've been working hard for a while to put a little buffer between us and unpleasantness. There are special places, special people even, to deal with sick ones and the dead.

Yet the most compassionate beings I know are those who've survived a tragedy - such as the loss of a child, or the accompanying of a dying friend or relative.

What if by keeping those unpleasant but inevitable happenings at arm's length, we have lost the natural medium through which we learn compassion, humaneness, the values that most embetter us?

I'm not saying we need to embrace additional, unnecessary hurt or pain; I am not nostalgic for the cave ages, nor advocating returning back to the foot-binding days (which, by the way, included breaking the bones repeatedly).

Or is this already established common knowledge and I'm joining the party late?