sympathy

Not to be confused with empathy. Empathy is the understanding of one’s situation due to having gone through a situation. Sympathy is (by classical standards) the understanding of one’s situation with no grounds to understand it by. Sympathy is much harder.

I believe that sympathy and empathy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they both lie on opposite ends of the same spectrum.

It is insanely difficult to purely sympathize with someone. Typically, people draw abstractions from multiple situations to be able to compare them with one another, however, being able to compare something is the definition of empathy. For example, here are some abstractions of a family member passing away:

• family member passing away
  • family member having illness
    • seeing a family member in pain
      • seeing a person close to you in pain
        • feeling pain or sorrow yourself

In this sense, sympathy is just the result of empathy at some abstraction and the difficulty of sympathy is a function of how many abstractions need to be taken to empathize.

In my life, mostly everyone regards me as unable to sympathize with people. This trait is probably drawn from my bubbly, hopelessy optimistic attitude. And they are mostly right—I have little patience for sadness, specifically inducing sadness into the lives of other people.

Digging deeper though, it is because it is easy to believe that happy people have not gone through difficult experiences. And by no means am I saying that I have endured more emotional pain than anyone—it is incomparable, like two priceless artifacts. However, I have endured things that should have brought me lots of sorrow in my life. I’ve chosen to move on though, turning a blind eye to these situations.

If I allowed myself to be sad about anything, I believe I would be spitting in the face of those who have endured pain and sorrow much greater than I could even imagine. I would be spitting in the face of everything the experience was meant for. Usually, true pain comes from loving experiences, not from hateful ones. Anger comes from hate, sorrow comes from love. What am I saying about experiences filled with love if I allow some aspect of them to dent myself? I would rather embody The Beyblade Spirit instead, and serve the causes of my sorrow with dignity.

So when I avoid grievance and sadness, it is not because I am dismissing of their causes, but rather serving them justly by spreading positivity into the world. In other words, it is not that your problem isn’t important, it is just that I am deadset on a solution instead.