Pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion in The Power Of Listening

Pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion. Each is received at various times by one in distress. They are the responses engendered by our misfortunes from those we encounter. And each feels different when received. Each has a different effect on those who are suffering in the midst of psychic or physical crisis. Of the four, compassion has a unique quality, a quality so different from the rest that it connotes a certain spiritual as well as emotional characteristic.

What happens when these qualities are forgotten in a society where they are most needed? The result is a cycle of indifference and a thirst for love. The hardest part is living in a country with so much distress, economic crisis, negligence from the government to take care of the people and poor quality education. In the midst of the misfortunes you must remind others that theses valuable qualities must be cherished and shared with every member of your community.

A few months ago, along with a group of friends, we decided to organize a community service project to assist elder people in a nursing home downtown Tegucigalpa. When we arrived at the home, personally I was taken aback by the deprived conditions they were living in, but to my surprise this is the reality of many public elderly homes in my country. At first it was hard to understand how was it possible that they were being mistreated in that way, living in an unclean place with very little psychological and physical aid, some of them left alone by their families because they couldn’t take care of them.

We manage to provide the elderly home with basic needs kits, clothes and food. Organizing entertaining evenings with craft workshops, board games and reading workshops helped to cheer them up and have them busy doing new things. A particular day, I was sitting by a man around 85 years old who seemed the most quiet of the group, we began talking and he was telling me the story of how he met his wife who passed away 5 years ago. His oldest daughter took care of him after the death of his wife, but after a year she couldn’t take care of him due to economic problems and brought him to this nursing home. With much sadness he explained that after she left him there he never saw her again.

When he finished sharing this story with me, he said, “Thank you for listening to me, it has been ages since someone took the time to talk with me.” I realized at that moment that sometimes just taking the time to listen to someone and relieve their pain, doesn’t matter if you have all the food and money in the world. This experience made a difference in my life and taught me that everyone deserves the same respect you have for yourself. On the other hand compassion has come to simply listen or laugh, to accompany whatever is taking place without expectation or the need to make things better. Because compassion believes that things are as they are meant to be. And it believes that all circumstance can

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