Everyone has experienced the feeling of sympathy. If not, I don't believe your a human being then. When one feels sympathetic to another living human or creature, it is because they are "affected by... a feeling similar or corresponding to that of the other" person or living organism (402). This is not an emotion one can just spontaneously learn. This is a feature and aspect of life where one needs to experience that specific hardship themselves. If you haven't experienced the specific hardship, then you wouldn't know what it would feel like if you were in their shoes. Thus, since you've never experienced it, you wouldn't truly know that it feels for example, horrible. How do I know this? It is because I've experienced this myself. For an example, when one loses a really close loved one such as a family member or maybe that close friend you've had since your childhood years, one learns to feels a mixture of emotions that just wants to erupt out of your system and make you bawl until your eyes dry out. I lost my grandparents. I lost both of them in the same year. I still remember it very vividly. It really hurt. My emotions were unstable to say for at least a good week. It was the first time I've lost someone I truly loved, which brings me to my next point. When someone says their parents passed away, one would automatically say sorry. Sorry to me, can be said with or without emotion, but it is when one has experienced the same pain is when the sorry is really meant. That is when the sorry has true feeling because the speaker truly knows how the bearer feels.
Everything we do has to do with how we feel at the moment because "our emotional faculty guides out moment-to-moment decisions... [that can] enable or disable thought itself" (407). At the time my grandparents died, I was at the age of 12, just barely getting out of my 6th grade year in middle school. I have to say, the above statement is true because I know from personal experience. At that time, I was at a state of depression. My emotions were so strong, that it fended off my intuitive side of the brain. I was no longer logical. I didn't focus to my school work nor did I have a good appetite for anything. Basically, my emotions disabled me to live life to it's fullest. It was not until I got over my grandparents did I resume a normal lifestyle. Emotions are strong. Even will power won't be able to stand against it.
Citations:
The Anthology
http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/uploadedImages/Home/Articles/Social_Issues/Articles/Depression.jpg
http://fpvillages.com/images/Sympathy2-main_Full.jpg
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