"Having sympathy with" & "Taking pity on"...
Sub-consciously I realized that I am always confused with these 2, having quite a hard time trying to differentiate them. They seem to be just a hair line of difference to me. When I was very young, my maternal Malaysian relatives often come to visit my family, especially during festive seasons. I would then mingle with them and play together with my cousins. There was once, my paternal uncle told me to share my toys with my Malaysian cousins and play together with them. He said that they are poorer with not many toys to play with, so I shouldn't be stingy and should share my toys with them. I am going to share my toys with them anyway even without my uncle telling me to, but what he said at that time did made me realized it is quite true to a certain extend. That incident sort of shaped my mentality of how I look at such things. It's amazing that I can still remember this so clearly until now. From that moment on, I realized that I am quite fortunate to be born in Singapore. Whenever my friends from neighboring countries come to visit, I would definitely like to treat them to meals and what's not, hoping that I can help them save money on such expenses and then they can use that amount of money to buy more stuff for themselves. Hmm... let me give an example.
I have a friend from Jakarta who came to Singapore for a visit last December. Being a children books' artist, she is naturally fond of children books especially those with nice drawings and illustrations in them. We went to Borders and she was showing me all the books she is interested in. So I asked if she is going to buy all those, she replied that she is going to buy a few from the discount corner and see if she has enough money left on the last day before deciding whether to buy the expensive ones. When I heard that, my heart tells me "ohh, poor thing...". I understand that it's a bit tough when you are on a tour to a country which currency is bigger than yours, you just can't anyhow spend unless you are damn filthy rich. lol It happened that the next day I am supposed to meet some friend at a night spot, so I make use of the opportunity to leave house earlier and went to Borders. I take a look at the few books she mentioned and choose to buy the more expensive one with the nicest illustrations. After that I went over to the hotel she is staying and hand her the book, she is so happy and keep saying thank you to me. Well, it makes me happy too if I can make other people happy. XD Sometime later, it started to get to me sub-consciously that such thoughts and action of mine... am I just being thoughtful or am I having sympathy with or taking pity on other people? I understand that some people might think that I am taking pity on them if I am to help (especially in the case of money)... but I definitely do not have the intention of despising them and try to be a saint with my actions. I always felt that those unfortunate people from natural disaster are very poor thing. I also realized I tend to sympathize with other people a lot... or is that taking pity on them? (sigh)... Nowadays I am kind of afraid to open myself up in such situations. I will hesitate and think whether will they appreciate my help or think that I’m just trying to show off being a hypocrite. I do not know why I cannot differentiate the differences and I'm still trying to learn how to. Hope I will get the answer someday. =) Labels: misc |
