Someone tells you about a great sorrow and you do not know what to say.

Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.

Yours

Staying seated.The discomfort you want to fill with words is your discomfort, not his. “I do not know what to say, but I am here” is almost always enough and almost always true.
Your own helplessness, and whether you can bear it.The heaviest part of the chair next to great sorrow is not the silence but the not-being-able. You want to solve that helplessness with words, plans, arranging help. Bear it; whoever can let his own powerlessness exist does not need to cheer the other up in order to relieve himself.

Not yours

His sorrow, and whether your words help.No sentence exists that solves it, and what he is going through will not be lightened by your phrasing. That is not a shortcoming of yours; that is the nature of great sorrow.

The reasoning. His sorrow cannot be solved; your chair can be kept occupied, and that turns out to be the whole job.

Accustom yourself to attend carefully to what another says, and as far as possible enter into his mind.Marcus Aurelius

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