Each year I volunteer for a program called Project Hope, run by the New York City Department of Homeless Services. Its mission is to count the number of people who are sleeping rough in the dead of winter. This year, the count has already been canceled twice, because it’s been too cold.

If the city feels it is too cold for well-fed, warmly dressed volunteers to count the homeless population, what about our unhoused neighbours who have no warm bed to climb into after we finish at 4 am? The city is freezing cold; perhaps our hearts have grown colder still. This month 18 homeless people have already died from exposure to the cold. We have six more weeks of winter—how many more will die before being counted?

Constantly think of the universe as a single living being, composed of a single substance and a single soul: and how all things issue into the single perceptions of this being and how it accomplishes all things through a single impulse, and how all things will together cause all that comes to be, and how intricately and densely woven is the fabric by their interweaving - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.40.

We’re all knitted together in this existence. What harms one of us harms all of us. When homeless people freeze and die, when they go uncounted and unacknowledged, we too suffer no matter what the thermostats in our cozy apartments say.

“Compassion” originates from the Latin compassio which means “to suffer together.” It is natural to react with sympathy when we see someone in distress, such as a mentally ill homeless person. That feeling of compassion, the “suffering together,” can be overwhelming and to protect ourselves from these negative feelings we sometimes close our hearts. We blame the sufferer for suffering and pretend that it’s someone else’s responsibility.

The impulse to share another’s pain is admirable and human, but as Stoics we also strive not to be ruled by emotion. It’s important that when helping others we don’t succumb to the same feelings that may be overwhelming them, or turn sympathy into scorn.

“Cognitive empathy” is the understanding of another person’s emotions without being consumed by them. This requires our rational prefrontal cortex to navigate past triggers and emotional responses. It allows us to keep a clear perspective and to take action.

“Social empathy” includes an understanding of the circumstances that helped lead to a predicament—family, society, government policies, addiction, and so on.

The poet John Donne wrote: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Stoics wouldn’t exactly agree with this because we know that death is inevitable and does not diminish us; instead, it is the failure to help, the refusal to be involved with mankind, that diminishes us.

Reason wishes to give calm to our emotions, not to rout them out. - Seneca, On Anger, 2.3

When we regulate emotion, we expand our dimension for constructive action. We listen to others in distress, gauge our response partly on the depth of feeling that they are experiencing, and then act. In modern English, the word “passion” means a great attraction, or a great desire. I think of my Stoic compassionate response as acting with great vigour to make a difference.

Karen Duffy is a producer, actress, and former MTV VJ. Her latest book on Stoicism. Wise Up (https:// amzn.to/3PpLv5D) is published by Seal Press.

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