Friday, December 01, 2006
Compassion and Pity
Compassion.... this is our virtue for December - Caring enough to do something about someone else's need (def. by 252basics curr.). Are compassion and pity the same thing? I always thought of pity as a negative or ill feeling towards someone, but compassion as a thoughtful act. I didn't want the kids to associate compassion with looking down on people - thinking that others are pitiful, etc. So I looked up compassion in the dictionary (online of course) and found that pity was part of the definition. I looked up pity and its definition included compassion. So its got me thinking are they just synonyms? I'm beginning to draw my own conclusion as I write, but I'd like to hear your conclusions.
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3 comments:
Maggie,
I have never thought of pity as a negative thing. To me I've always felt empathy for someone when I've thought of pity. I think I mentioned at work today about someone that when I see I always feel sorry for her. I don't know if that's what brought on your thoughts or not.
But, it's never meant I've felt I've been better than her. It's that I have felt sympathy towards her and had feelings that I wish things could be different for her (and I don't even really know this person....she could feel that she has a really wonderful life).
So to me, I think sympathy and pity have kinda of meant the same thing.
I ran into this problem once before with the word "backwards". Backwards to me had always meant shy or not outgoing. I was talking to a mom once and mentioned that I thought her son was a little backward. She took offense to this in a way and let me know that she thought backward meant socially inadequate or something along those lines.
I tried to smooth it over and tell her that I had always considered Jamie backwards because of her shyness, but I didn't mean it any other way.
Maybe words have our own different meanings to us and maybe that's why we get in trouble communicating sometimes.
Have a great weekend.
compassion: a deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering the humane quality of; understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it
pity: a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others
i think there is a connotation that in compassion people will be moved to action more than in pity. Also, I think in compassion people personally relate to the person/issue, whereas in pity they see the issue/person as much different then themselves.
Wow, Maggie, talk about saved by the bell. Good thing you came thru! Nice to know you do have some compassion.
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