Are you of a sympathetic nature?
If so, do not let your sympathies help to add to the world's miseries.
That may seem a strange expression, but it can be explained if you will
listen.
Much of the misery in the world is the result of imagination.
All of it is the result of selfishness and ignorance.
But hundreds and thousands of people believe themselves sick, sorrowful
and poverty stricken, who would be well, glad and prosperous, if they
only thought themselves so.
Every time you pour out your sympathy upon these self-made sufferers,
you add to their burden of wrong thought, and make it just so much more
difficult for them to rise out of their troubles.
I do not believe all the misfortune in the world is caused by wrong
thinking in this life, or can be done away with by right thinking. The
three-year-old child who toddles in front of a trolley car and loses a
leg, while the tired mother is bending over the washtub to keep the
wolf of hunger at bay, cannot be blamed for wrong thinking as the cause
of its trouble. Neither can the deaf mute or the child born blind or
deformed. We must go farther back, to former lives, to find the first
cause of such misfortunes.
No "New Thought," no amount of optimistic theology or philosophy can
restore the child's leg, or ears, or eyes. It is utter nonsense to say
that miracles like these can be performed.
There are scores of individuals whom we meet handicapped in life's race
by such dire calamities that we spontaneously pour forth our sympathy.
But, even to these, it were kinder and wiser to give diverting
thoughts, and a new outlook, and to open up avenues for pleasure, and
entertainment, and profit, in place of tears and condolence.
Sympathy, without alleviating actions to a sufferer, is like a cloud
without rain to the parched earth.
But the great majority of people whom we encounter are making their own
crosses, and we who offer them sympathy, and condolence, are but adding
to the burden's weight.
I do not recommend coldness, indifference, or ridicule as a substitute
for sympathy. But instead of leading the sick man on to tell you the
details of his illness, and to describe all his symptoms, while your
own body responds with sympathetic aches and pains as you listen, it is
kinder to divert his attention to some cheerful and merry topic, or to
refer to some case like his own which resulted in perfect restoration
to health. Instead of going down into his underground cave of
depression, bring him out into the wholesome sunlight of your own
healthful state, even if for a moment only, and impress upon his mind
that health belongs to him, and must return to him.
To the man in business trouble the same advice applies.
Tell him you are sorry for him, but do not take on his despondency to
prove it.
Talk of the future and all the possibilities it holds for a determined
man or woman.
Make him laugh. Speak of trouble as the gymnasium where our moral
muscles are developed. Answer him that everything he desires is his if
he will be persistent and determined in demanding his own. If you put
force in your words you will leave an impression.
Do not go away from the house of trouble in tears, but leave the
troubled ones you called upon smiling as you depart.
That is true sympathy.