The Fifty Lessons

25. SYMPATHY

Sympathising is an art.
Your sympathy can cheer up anyone or make them feel more depressed.
How?
If someone is feeling low, your words of consolation can uplift their mood as it might make them think that atleast someone is there who feels them, but at the same time if your consoling turns into pitying it might make them feel as if their feelings aren't normal or that they've been through a lot and they might end up pitying their own selves and hating their own life!

So how to make out this difference between consoling and pitying and how to avoid pitying?

Firstly lets understand what is sympathy.
It is that ray of hope which you can give to someone who has lost all their hopes in life!
Sympathising means saying those words which can make a person believe that everything will be alright.
It gives them the strength to rise up again.
Whereas
Pitying is totally different.
Pitying is telling a person how sorry you are for them.
And that they have a really sad life.
It makes them believe that they deserve better and they start thinking that life is really unfair to them and eventually they end up hating their lives.

Now our intentions might be to make a person feel better but unknowingly we end up pitying them, hence its really important to understand the difference between the two.

Also, pitying includes a sense of unacceptance. That is, when we pity, it is the same as being dissatisfied with life which in turns become the root cause of all the problems.
On the contrary, when we have a sense of acceptance in life we console our ownself by saying that everything would be fine and we rise up again because we know that whatever happened as a reason behind it and it is for our own benefit.

So if you actually wanna help someone, wanna make someone feel better then rather than pitying them or being sorry for them, tell them that it is for their own benefit.
Tell them that falling is the first step one needs to take in order to rise up.
Yes, they might be very disheartened and hence not in a condition to understand that, and that is why you first need to console them and make them believe that they've got this and it's gonna be fine, and after that you need to make them understand that they should learn from whatever has happened and become a better version of themselves, because eventually whatever happened was meant to happen!

Also the best person who can console you is you yourself!
So the next time your life is all over the place, don't cry and pity yourself, don't think that I deserved better but I have a lifetime of bad luck, don't think that your life is pathetic, instead get up, wipe your tears and accept that whatever happened was meant to happen and it has definitely happened to teach you a lesson and that at the end of the day things would get better, if not, promise yourself that you will make it better!
Now that is a healthy attitude towards life.

Don't pity yourself, only console and be happy about it because more the struggles more the teachings, and hence more wiser version of you is born everytime you fall!
So engage yourself in waiting for times to get better or realize that everything happens for the best and make times better for your ownself.

Choice is yours.