“Friends are the pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up, sometimes they lean on you, and sometimes it's just enough to know that they are standing by.”
Sympathy is a word derived from Greek, meaning “together” and “suffer”. Thus when people share in others grief, they are being sympathetic. We could also say that sympathy displays the notion of understanding another’s grief and denotes that you are with him in this hour of need. The word empathizing is used interchangeably and can mean responding to another’s emotional distress
Sympathy is also closely linked with compassion. We often equate sympathizing with giving in times of need. Excessive sympathy can be fraught with dangers.
I feel that too much sympathy can become a disabling emotion when a person’s attitude becomes one of receiving emotional understanding for difficult situations. So the focus shifts away from the positive or taking corrective action to one of making people understand situations in a favorable way to extricate assistance. Thus the focus is away from setting things right yourself to expecting help and getting someone else to do your job. One saying which has always borne this point out is:
Give me a fish, I eat for a day
Teach me how to fish, I eat for a lifetime.
The essence in both is assistance, however in the first; the person receiving help becomes dependent on someone else while in the second case he becomes dependent on himself. In the first case he receives sympathy. You need to be sympathetic with people but you must ensure that sympathy does not act like a crutch where they loose the ability for action on their own. In the second case also a person is getting sympathy, but with a path to progress, helping the sufferer stand up by himself.
In today’s world where there is so much hardship and financial crisis, we need understanding and support, but we need to understand that sympathy will not get us out of problems. It could help us to unload burdens; the final results however would be due to our actions.
Remember the words of Oscar Wilde
“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.”
Sympathy is a word derived from Greek, meaning “together” and “suffer”. Thus when people share in others grief, they are being sympathetic. We could also say that sympathy displays the notion of understanding another’s grief and denotes that you are with him in this hour of need. The word empathizing is used interchangeably and can mean responding to another’s emotional distress
Sympathy is also closely linked with compassion. We often equate sympathizing with giving in times of need. Excessive sympathy can be fraught with dangers.
I feel that too much sympathy can become a disabling emotion when a person’s attitude becomes one of receiving emotional understanding for difficult situations. So the focus shifts away from the positive or taking corrective action to one of making people understand situations in a favorable way to extricate assistance. Thus the focus is away from setting things right yourself to expecting help and getting someone else to do your job. One saying which has always borne this point out is:
Give me a fish, I eat for a day
Teach me how to fish, I eat for a lifetime.
The essence in both is assistance, however in the first; the person receiving help becomes dependent on someone else while in the second case he becomes dependent on himself. In the first case he receives sympathy. You need to be sympathetic with people but you must ensure that sympathy does not act like a crutch where they loose the ability for action on their own. In the second case also a person is getting sympathy, but with a path to progress, helping the sufferer stand up by himself.
In today’s world where there is so much hardship and financial crisis, we need understanding and support, but we need to understand that sympathy will not get us out of problems. It could help us to unload burdens; the final results however would be due to our actions.
Remember the words of Oscar Wilde
“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.”
6 comments:
Hi Sunil,
Absolutely we need to draw the line on sympathy as it can enable weakness.
If we want to empower someone, tough love may be the key.
Cheers,
Mary
Hi Sunil,
Absolutely we need to draw the line on sympathy as it can enable weakness.
If we want to empower someone, tough love may be the key.
Cheers,
ReloMary
Every single thing in this world has to be in a right proportion, be it love, care, anger or SYMPATHY. Excess of love, would also harm the beloved person. Similarly, sympathy is essentially needed to the ones who are in trouble or grief. Not being sympathatic to a person or to a situation is also similar to being insenstive about the matter. And even you feel sensitive about things, and you do not sympathize then again, you might be lacking somwhere! If you feel sympathatic, you go and express! Healing someone's sorrows is the best thing we can ever do in life! Connecting with our own parents, relatives and friends is quite obvious, feeling sensitive and concerned about them is also natural! But giving a healing touch, a soothening hug, a few comforting words to someone at your workplace, someone you may not even know, is really giving!
Now if you keep sympathizing someone it will make him/her habitual to get healed and sympathized. Any kind of habit becomes a weakness in no time. Smoking, drinking or even some particular eating habits, makes you do whatever it takes. And that I believe is weakness. The same what we do with our children. We pamper them, care for them, sympathize them as and when. But at times we have to be harsh, to make him/her learn things, do things at their own and come out as an independent and developed person.
Also, in many cases, habit of sympathy would not accept any other form of behavior after some time. For example, a child being pampered for long time would not be able to take any kind of anger or imposition over self. If something is done in that way will cause unexpected consequeces as well. So little of love, little of sympathy and little of reality! Give a chance to the person to develop self and be independent is the key.
Sneh Bhavsar
Snehism - My website
|| Snehism || - My Blog
Nobody can share the sorrow actually, we can be just be there in bad times and help in getting out of it. Being sympathetic is a short cut and one may be just sympathetic and not feel and share the pain. Times may be troubled, so depending on exact man-to-man feel one can & should draw the line of involvement thus not enabling the disabling emotion.
i agree we should not go overboard and in turn instaed of getting the person back into positive spirit and confidence may the person victim of sympathy .........yes we should draw a line
Years ago, when I was still in high school, my best friend lost her older brother to a car accident. I loved my friend and there wasn't a second in this story that I didn't feel empathy. There was a point my sympathy stopped though even when my empathy was still there.
She was using her loss to skip school you see. Initially it was real-- she simply needed the space. But as time went by she started to enjoy the attention of others and started corrupting her choices, her soul really as this way of giving in to the pain. I called her on it and though we fell apart for a while we were able to stay friends after a while. I was empathic, not sympathetic and since she knew I really whole heartedly did it for her she could see beyond her perceived offense.
I guess the first question is what's more important-- keeping an employee "satisfied" or doing what you think is right?
In my world of KindExcellence empathy should always be there, and if there is a real need for compromises that can be managed somehow within the business then that's the way to go (including everyone trying harder and appreciating the sacrifice-- the "victim" as well-- empathy must always be joined by boundaries and the giver must always give only as far as he or she wants to-- giving should be unconditional but never limitless)-- but if the need is something the one in need of empathy is exploiting then empathy and sympathy must part ways.
Post a Comment