It is generally accepted that man is a social being, capable of sympathizing with his neighbor. The very concept of compassion involves experiencing with someone his pain - suffering together. On how this feeling is appropriate and whether it is necessary in human society, opinions, oddly enough, differ.
Compassion as a hindrance
Someone dares to directly declare that this is completely useless, and gives another example of compassion from life (fortunately, you can find an illustration in any way of thinking in it): a woman walked to herself, saw a homeless puppy, regretted, fed, and then an ungrateful dog grew up and bit her child's savior.
This is followed by Nietzschean reflections that the weak should perish, and the strong, respectively, to survive. If you think in this vein, the question of whether sympathy and compassion is needed in life is excluded in principle. In fairness, it should be noted that all these arguments are peculiar to people who are either mentally unhealthy (to whom the founder of the theory himself belonged), or emotionally immature - due to age or lack of imagination.
The quality of a developed person
The ability to abstract thinking in the process of compassion is necessary: ​​we often sympathize with people who have never been to the place (and thank God). Physical or mental injuries and losses cause a feeling of compassion - perhaps only because a person is able to use his own, similar (even the most insignificant) experience to imagine how one who is even less fortunate should feel.
Experience son of difficult mistakes
This leads us to the common opinion, which claims that in order to feel someone else's pain, you need to at least once test your own. On the one hand, this is true - each of us can confirm that other people's feelings become much more understandable when you yourself experience these. Daughters begin to understand their mothers much better by giving birth to their own child. Having suffered humiliation at school, it is easier to imagine yourself at the place of the outcast.
On the other hand, the notorious personal experience is not necessarily the key to success: every example of compassion from life is balanced by its opposite. Army hazing is indicative in this respect: yesterday they humiliate me, today I humiliate me. Such revenge, aimed at the whole world around, is the flip side of sympathy. The way in which each of us uses his life experience depends on the person’s personality, his upbringing, the environment in which he lives, and many other factors.
Feeling and business
Strictly adhering to the factual side, compassion is just a feeling. In itself, it is fruitless and is intended only to motivate to action - to come to the rescue. Conversely, to get help, compassion must first be raised. Examples from people's lives are focused, in principle, on this. Here is a man who came from another city, received a salary and agreed to drink unfamiliar people in a warm company (an act in itself is far from optimal, but, as a rule, stupidity precedes any troubles). The newfound comrades intoxicated him, the money was taken and thrown out to the poor man on the side of the road.
A guy walks past, stops, finds out what’s the matter, and gives money for travel to the house. Someone will say that this is a real example of compassion from life, but it may well turn out that he is so indicative only because in this case the feeling gave rise to action.
Old problem
In the course of thinking about the nature of empathy, it is customary to delve into the shades of concepts and say that compassion exalts, pity humiliates, various interpretations, subtle nuances are given. The famous Austrian writer S. Zweig introduced another concept related to the subject - "impatience of the heart." He wrote the eponymous novel, the central theme of which was compassion. A composition, life examples in which are vivid, interesting and very illustrative, can be considered a deep and very ambiguous philosophical development of the concept of sympathy and responsibility for it.
So, a young man meets a crippled girl who falls in love with him greatly. In a fit of compassion (is it him?) The hero decides to marry her. Further, his inner torment is described in detail, resulting in a tragedy: an abandoned heroine ends her life by suicide.
This situation is literary, but a similar example of compassion from life, albeit not so dramatic, is not as difficult to find as it seems: an unwanted child lives in a nearby entrance, almost a homeless child. Mother drinks bitterly, stepfather mocks him. One "beautiful" night, the boy is on the street, and compassionate neighbors pick him up. He spends the night there, another, and then no one wants to either take responsibility or mess around with someone else's child, and as a result, he again finds himself in the circle of his so-called family.
For some time, the boy comes to the people who helped him: he brings flowers, tries to communicate, but does not find understanding: they are busy with their problems, they are not up to him. He becomes embittered and sets off to wander.
Impatience of the heart
It is logical to assume that in the matter of compassion, as in any other, one must either complete what has begun, or not begin at all.
In the book, the theme gets a peculiar development: the young man tormented by the pangs of remorse comes to the doctor of the deceased bride, and it turns out that he in the same situation did the exact opposite: he married his blind patient, devoting her his whole life to her.
The author puts the following thought into the mouth of this character: it happens, they say, true compassion, but sometimes it’s just the impatience of the heart - a feeling that arises in each of us when we see someone’s pain or unpleasantness. This causes discomfort in the soul of those around them, a desire to correct it as soon as possible - not in order to help the suffering person, but in order to regain their own peace of mind. And our fussy, inconsistent actions can lead to truly dramatic consequences.
Another example of compassion from life, which can rightfully be considered the classic “impatience of the heart” according to Zweig, is alms given to a dirty woman in the
underpass with a sleeping child in her arms. Thousands of words have already been said and printed about drug-addicted unhappy children, thanks to which unscrupulous people are enriched - their place in hard labor, with a cast-iron core on their feet. But no: citizens with enviable persistence continue to throw trifles in a cardboard box of a beggar, thus investing in infanticide. Is this not a mockery of such categories as sympathy, compassion, support?
Think first
Apparently, everything should be approached, listening to the voice of not only the heart, but also the mind. Even the Christian religion, calling for mercy, at the same time says: “Let your alms sweat in your hands before you know who you are giving” (Doctrine of the 12 Apostles, chapter 1, art. 6). This advice is interpreted in different ways, but also in the sense that it is not necessary to provide support to the "covetous". It is unlikely that the money handed to an alcoholic for vodka or a drug addict for his infernal potion is a manifestation of compassion - rather, this is a desire to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Another question is very important: "Do you need compassion and compassion in life, requiring sacrifice from a person and thereby giving rise to a kind of chain reaction?" The same doctor from the already mentioned book, married to an unloved woman, inevitably evokes sympathy, like herself. Is a person entitled to sacrifice himself for empathy, or do such actions destroy both the receiver and the giver?
Examples of mercy and compassion from one’s life can be given by anyone in whom there is even a drop of gratitude. It is unlikely that there is a person in the world whom no one has ever helped in his life. As well as the villain who has not done a single good deed ... We all give and receive - and everyone decides for himself the question of the proportionality of the given and received.