Why compassion? It boils down to this: Without compassion writing, like all human communication, devolves into dismissiveness, attack and put-down, all of which are disconnecting, and ultimately dehumanizing. I do not like writing that treats human beings and the world they live in, as things to be manipulated, played with and destroyed. Psychologically speaking, a person who does that is called a sociopath, a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. I've worked for a few of them, and during my career as a mental health professional, I've treated a few of them, and I do not like them. So in my writing, I aim for a compassionate treatment of all of my characters, even the sociopaths.

The word compassion has two basic definitions: (1) A deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering; and (2) the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it (WordWeb thesaurus and dictionary).

As a writer I think compassion, like humility, is vital to all good writing. And I don't mean brushing aside all of a person's negative traits. Some people are like the psychopathic doctor in Erik Larson's book The Devil in the White City. In what is the best description of a psychopath I have ever read, this is how Larson describes him: “Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught the notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next a calculation of worth, and last a decision to act or remain motionless.” If you're wondering how in blazes anyone could have compassion for someone like that, I hear you. Sometimes all I want to say is “I detest the miserable little shit!” and be done with it. Doctor Holmes in Erik Larson's popular history of Chicago during the 1890s is a good candidate to lob gobs of the stuff at. The thing is, he wouldn't have reacted at all except to look at you with those deadly lizard eyes and wait for the chance to kill, much like Pedro Gomez, the murderous Mexico City cop in my story “The Disappearance of Pedro Gomez”, which is also a chapter in my novel about Mexico City.

Though compassion does not come easily, it is important because it allows me to understand a person and what made that person the way he or she is. Compassion is neither wishy-washy nor sentimental, and it doesn't whitewash people; what it does is enable me to see the person, however horrific and dangerous he or she may be, as a human being who, through accident, experience or biological disorder, changed from an innocent newborn into a monster. Without compassion, it is all too easy for me to dismiss a person and to treat him as badly as he or she treats others. And this I refuse to do. So compassion is a vital element in my writing.

Years ago I read a book about Manuel, a young murderer in Santiago, Chile. He grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, lived on the streets, and became a male prostitute because it provided him with income. He was in prison for murdering a prominent Santiago attorney, who was his lover. He was disconnected from people and viewed them as things to be used to get what and where he wanted. When the interviewer, a British journalist, met him, he was cold, distant, had the flat eyes of a reptile, and expressed no interest in the interview or the interviewer, but did approve the interviewer coming back if he wanted to. His main interest was in talking about himself. By the end of the book, I saw Manuel as a human being with a life, experiences and feelings that I could relate to. Did that make him into someone the interviewer or anyone else could trust? Absolutely not! Would that ever be possible? Probably not, and at best, a very long shot. A likable person? Not at all. But through the interviewer's eyes of compassion, I saw Manuel as another human being, albeit a dangerous one.

That is why compassion is, for me as a person, a writer and a reader, both needed and necessary.