Where Does Your Sympathy Lie?
My grandmother, when she died at 106, had rarely been sick or in pain. It’s a wonderful way to live, but living without physical suffering did leave her sometimes lacking in sympathy. One year, when my mother was in her late 50’s and my grandmother was a very peppy 75, my mother suffered from debilitating back issues. For years the two of them would go every summer weekend to my grandmother’s cabin on Lake Okoboji. One Friday afternoon my grandmother arrived at my mother’s door and informed her that she was going to the lake just like she always did. My mother, barely able to move, cried and wondered out loud how she would take care of herself. My grandmother had no concern and left my mother to feebly fend for herself.
I’ve been thinking about this story lately, through this Covid-19 experience, as I consider our inability to often sympathize and change our behavior to help others. My grandmother was a genuinely loving person but she, at the age of 75, had never experienced back pain and couldn’t understand why my mother could hardly stand or walk.
During this time, consider for a moment where your sympathy may be lacking. What pain that others genuinely experience, do you have trouble understanding or even thinking is legitimate. In this last week I have seen this insensitivity in action and heard people complain about how much someone else’s comment hurt them. I have seen people, unworried about themselves getting sick, almost run down an immune compromised person on the trail. And for those who are financially stable it’s often difficult to understand how stressful living on the edge of economic devastation can be and so we often make comments that don’t take people’s financial reality into account when we assume they are enjoying their time off.
We tend, in any situation, to identify with people who have similar problems to ours. Along with this I find I often like to label those who don’t see things my way as crazy, neurotic, or heartless – but I know my grandmother was not heartless or crazy or neurotic. She simply didn’t understand my mother’s pain because she hadn’t felt anything like it.
This next week I invite you to open yourself to the genuine concerns of others and consider how you might consider their pain and trouble legitimate. Also, how can you make modifications to how you live out of respect for others? And finally how can you give people grace and not jump immediately to thinking them heartless when they don't behave the way you want?
