Pity

Posted on March 9, 2005 in Disappointment Hope and Joy Words

Pity is not a bad word. Nor is the phrase “self-pity”. Nor is feeling sorry. In our Viking society of rapine and pillage, we have come to think that the acknowledgement of pain is a sign of weakness. To cure ourselves of this sickness, we need to return to the values of Christ and the Buddha.

The first Noble Truth states that “The World is Full of Suffering.” It launches us into a fearless self-examination of the state of our being and the factors that afflict others. It calls for pity, the recognition that we and other people are in pain.

Too often I have heard people deriding the suffering with phrases like “get off your pity pot”. (Twelve steppers seem especially fond of this phrase.) That’s not the language of support or recovery: that’s the language of the bar, of the outhouse wall, of the troll. Pity is an important first step: you recognize that you are suffering. People are acting in a way towards you that you don’t know how to handle. You want to retreat into your drink or your narcotic or your disease. It hurts.

The proper response is to attempt to empower the individual. “You can get through this,” is one phrase that you can use. Picking on them, telling them to get over it only deepens the pain. They may snap out of it for a few days or weeks, but they will be back and on top it they will bear your guilt trip.

If you have to do that to a person who expresses their sorrow, then I pity you. I pity you because you must be suffering. And the way to end this suffering is to become a compassionate listener, one who knows to carefully guide the suffering Buddha. For the mentally ill, it is sometimes necessary to take small steps. Just getting a very depressed person to live one more day, take a bite of food from your hands, etc. is a victory that you should stress. They’ll get over the sadness. You need to realize that it can’t be snapped out of them. It is walked out, a step at a time.

And perhaps you are jealous of the attention they are receiving? Perhaps you suffer for that? It’s important that you take a breath, go for a walk. You might do other things that symptomize your unhappiness: you might hate Nicole Kidmann for being so beautiful. What this represents is a need to move on to the Second Noble Truth, which is to recognize that suffering comes out of cravings. The Third is to ameliorate those cravings. Then you can move on to the Fourth Noble Truth which is the Eightfold Path.

Pity yourself. You suffer. Now empower yourself. Give yourself the gift of strength to overcome those cravings.