ManicDDaily

Further to my post of last night about effective types of sympathy, and the difficulties of being “cheered up” when dealing with difficult circumstances (in this case, a sick dog.)   I think I was a bit hard on the traditionally British clipped approach. (Ironically, I’ll call it the “Hornblower” approach, naming it after Horatio Hornblower, even though that name implies a kind of blowhardness, which is exactly what’s absent there.)

Any sympathy that’s heartfelt is frankly amazingly powerful, and clipped, felt, expressions of it–the brief “hard luck”, “too bad”–are  actually wonderful.  That clipped sort of expression, if felt, doesn’t really diminish the plaint or plight of the sympathizee (the person in trouble or pain), but instead implies that (i) difficulty is part of life; (ii) isn’t it hard?, and (iii) we are all in it together.  It’s a sharing that helps the sympathizee (i) feel some communion, but (ii) also feel strengthened, enabled to do what’s next.

Sorry to be so abstract about all this;  random analysis is also something useful when circumstances are beyond one’s control.

This entry was posted on May 20, 2010 at 7:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: analysis of sympathy, manicddaily, sympathy