Act as if you were happy, and that will tend to make you happy. –Dale Carnegie (1936)
In 1651 the concept of sympathy, as we understand it today, did not exist. Hobbes, for example, claimed that if one viewed a ship on the rocks (not an uncommon sight in Merry Old England) and its passengers and crew were drowning that this scene would give one pleasure for one would delight in one’s own safety.
In the 1700s a change occurred. Sympathy, as we understand it today, was introduced into the Culture. The thought became: If my friends are experiencing pleasure then I will experience pleasure and if my friends are experiencing suffering I will suffer with them.
Sympathy changed Hobbesian human beings – human beings that were entirely egoistic – into communal/social human beings: I view or hear about suffering and I suffer.
Gentle Reader, you might remember that the following photo was one that helped change our view of the Vietnam War – many of us experienced the suffering as we viewed the suffering. As a reminder, here is the photo:
In our search for happiness we cannot escape pain, suffering and death. This, of course, is a paradox. Here are a few other paradoxes: Virtue needs Vice; Light needs Darkness; Good needs Evil and Happiness needs Suffering.
Sympathy, as I am thinking about it, is not pity (think: feeling sorry for the one suffering) it is empathy (think: I suffer because you suffer). For many of us the power of the photograph moved us from pity to empathy, from feeling sorry for those poor people to suffering with them. Once we crossed the empathy-threshold and suffered with ‘them’ the Vietnam War took on a very different meaning for us.
Voltaire upped the ante for us. He noted that being empathetic (experiencing suffering with the one suffering) contained an unintended consequence: Survivor Guilt. Anyone who has experienced this knows of what Voltaire speaks. This type of guilt can lead one to take action – the anti-Vietnam War movement, for example – or it can dis-able.
Today, in our Country, the suffering of the little ones who are locked up in the camps on our borders are, because of sympathy and empathy, moving some to take action and is dis-abling others.
Sympathy and Empathy allow us to suffer along with the suffering. Happiness lies dormant – waiting to be called to life. Given this, let us return to our topic ‘Happiness.’
Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil. –Zora Neale Hurston (1939)
Searcher-Seeker 