Article May 31, 1999 Issue

The right kind of sympathy

Pity lifts no one up. Have you tried compassion?

By Cheryl F. M. Petersen

AS THE DAYS went on, I could see the weight they were holding increase. Within weeks the load looked so heavy, so troublesome. I groaned. Never liking to feel burdened myself, I wondered what I could do to help.

In this particular instance I knew exactly what to do. Quit being foolish! They were only apple trees with great apples growing on them. The trees never once complained of burden. After harvest, the limbs popped back up ready for another growing season. The strain I felt was of my own making, and my sympathy wasn't needed and wouldn't have helped anyway.

It reminded me of a time when we fostered a child years ago, a time I intently explored this sentence from Science and Health:"Sympathy with error should disappear" (p. 211). When I went to pick up the little boy who would be joining our family, his previous foster mother gave me his possessions along with several medicines. One was a prescription to be used if he had a fever. She explained that the medicine produced a side effect of convulsions, but the fevers this child was prone to were worse than the side effect. Also, he was afraid of everything. When we got home I couldn't even operate the vacuum cleaner without his becoming terrified. And he was overweight—he had been given food to appease these trials in the past.

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Judgmental? Me?
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