Home › Topics

Pity and compassion

Compassion that swallows you helps nobody. The Stoics distinguished between feeling with someone and being pulled under with them, and insisted the second is not a deeper form of the first. These exercises are about staying useful to a person in trouble.

44 exercises and cases on pity and compassion, from the Stoic practice of sorting what is yours from what is not.

Cases in this topic

Epictetus and the childPity and compassionMarcus and book onePity and compassionNiebuhr and the prayer that travelledPity and compassionCato and the helmet of waterPity and compassion

Cuts in this topic

Take the situation apart. Each piece goes in one box; there is no third option.

The situation
A friend is in the middle of a divorce and calls you every evening.
Yours
  • Whether you pick up when it suits you rather than always.
  • Whether you listen or start offering solutions.
  • Whether you say when it becomes too much for you.
Not yours
  • That he is unhappy.
  • Whether he follows your advice.
  • How long this is going to last.
Read the full sorting
The situation
A colleague breaks down during a meeting.
Yours
  • Whether you get up and walk out with him.One act of ten seconds that the whole room is waiting for and almost nobody performs. It is small, it is yours, and at that moment it is the only thing that counts.
  • Whether you treat him afterwards as you did before.Most of the damage comes not from the moment but from the weeks after, in which people start being careful. Carrying on normally is a choice and the largest gift available.
  • Whether you ask what he needs instead of deciding what is good for him.The question costs nothing and saves everything. What you would want in his place is rarely what he wants, and you find that difference only by asking.
Not yours
  • That it happens in front of everybody.Nobody chooses the moment at which it stops working. The room was chance, and it is the circumstance rather than his character.
  • Whether he accepts help afterwards.Offering is yours, accepting is his. Anyone who measures his own usefulness by the acceptance ends up resenting somebody in trouble.
  • What the others will say about it.Offices talk; that happens without you. What you yourself do not pass on is a separate matter, and that one is in the right column.
The reasoning. Compassion runs aground in two places: people want to solve the trouble itself, and they want their help to be accepted. Both sit on the left. What sits on the right is small and concrete: walking out with him, behaving normally later, asking instead of assuming. That is less than you would like to give and precisely what is needed.
The situation
Your parent is becoming dependent on your help.
Yours
  • Whether you arrange help instead of doing everything yourself.Anyone carrying it alone does not last and ends up helping less. Bringing in help feels like falling short and is the opposite.
  • Whether you agree with your brothers and sisters who does what.Almost all the quarrelling in this phase comes from an unspoken division. One conversation in advance is uncomfortable and saves years.
  • Whether you treat him as somebody who can decide for as long as he can.Loving people stumble here. Caring slides easily into taking over, and the difference between helping and deciding is the last piece of dignity he has.
Not yours
  • That the roles reverse.It happens in nearly every life and is nobody's fault. It feels heavy because it looks unnatural while being entirely ordinary.
  • Whether he accepts the help with good grace.His pride, his shame, his eighty-year-old character. You can offer and you cannot make him grateful.
  • How much time there still is for this.Nobody can say, the doctors included. Counting on a timeframe turns every month into a countdown and him into a patient with a schedule.
The reasoning. Caring for a parent is the territory where people pull most things into their own box that do not belong there: his mood, his gratitude, the duration. What does belong there is organisational and dull, and it is precisely what decides between lasting and burning out. Epictetus said duties follow from relationships; he did not say you have to carry them alone.
The situation
You want to save someone who is hurting himself.
Yours
  • Voicing your concern and offering help.Giving information, involving professionals where possible, and staying present: that is your box, and it is not small. Do everything that is yours, and learn to bear that it is not everything.
  • Your own limit: what you can carry without falling over yourself.The helper has a box too. Whoever drains himself helps for a shorter time and less well, and delivers guilt to the other person on top. Guarding your limit is not selfishness; it is making sure somebody is still standing next to him a year from now.
Not yours
  • His choices, and his moment of turning around.A person only changes from the inside; that is not indifference but a fact. Whoever makes himself responsible for somebody else’s turnaround lifts something that cannot be lifted, and breaks on it himself.
The reasoning. The heaviest mixture there is, and exactly why the line must be sharp: your part in full, and his part with him, without losing sight of him.
The situation
A friend calls every week with the same complaints, but does nothing with what you suggest.
Yours
  • Your ear, your honesty, and your boundary.Listening is yours, and so is the question “I keep hearing this, what will you do with it?” That is not harshness; that is what a friend asks. And the weekly ninety minutes may have a limit.
Not yours
  • His situation and his pace.What he does with your suggestions, when he gets moving, whether he gets moving: that he lifts himself or nobody does. Whoever carries what the other must lift weakens two people at once.
  • Whether it ever changes.Maybe in five years he will still be calling with the same story. That prospect is not yours to carry or to prevent; listening today does not commit you to ten years of listening. You decide per occasion, not forever.
The reasoning. Helping is not the same as carrying; the first is yours, the second was never yours to give.
The situation
On the street someone asks for money; you doubt whether the story is true.
Yours
  • Whether you give.Do what fits you, and let what the other does with your gift be his part. Give or do not give, but do not let your choice be held hostage by a question nobody can answer.
Not yours
  • Whether his story is true.You will never get to verify it; it lives inside him. Whoever first demands certainty about somebody else’s inside has a watertight excuse never to do anything.
  • What the bystanders think of you, whether you give or not.Whoever gives is naive to one passer-by; whoever walks on is hard to another. Both verdicts are passed on the pavement, in a second, by people who walk on themselves. Leave the jury in the street; it never had a vote anyway.
The reasoning. Your gift ends at the giving; what comes after was never for sale.
The situation
A colleague gets torn apart in a meeting while everyone stays silent.
Yours
  • Whether anyone said something.One calm sentence, “I think we should discuss this differently”, changes the temperature of the room. Afterwards it almost always turns out this was the only thing that counted: not whether the group turned, but whether somebody spoke.
Not yours
  • The tearing apart, and the group’s silence.How hard the attacker goes and whether the others move along is not yours to steer; groups have their own gravity, and it pulls towards silence.
  • How that one sentence lands.Whether the attacker backs down, whether the room turns, whether it is held against you later: that plays out after you have spoken, in heads you do not steer. The sentence is yours; the landing never was.
The reasoning. The room chooses its own silence; your voice is the only piece of the meeting that is yours.
The situation
Your aging father refuses help he clearly needs.
Yours
  • Keeping the offer open, and staying near.
  • Your irritation at his stubbornness.
Not yours
  • His refusal.
Read the full sorting
The situation
Someone tells you something in confidence and you do not know whether to pass it on.
Yours
  • Your silence or your speaking.A real weighing, not a rule. Breaking confidence is serious; staying silent while danger looms is too. Two questions help: am I serving the other person with this, or mainly my own discomfort? And can I say it to him first, before I tell anybody else?
Not yours
  • What is going on, and what the other person decides.His situation, his secret and what he does with it remain his, even now that you know. Knowing is not owning.
  • What speaking does to your bond.Even with the purest weighing, the friendship can take damage; gratitude for your courage is not guaranteed. That risk belongs to the decision and cannot be planned away. You choose the deed, not the aftermath.
The reasoning. The secret is his; the mouth is yours. Weigh it by asking whom you serve.
The situation
Someone tells you about a great sorrow and you do not know what to say.
Yours
  • Staying seated.
  • Your own helplessness, and whether you can bear it.
Not yours
  • His sorrow, and whether your words help.
Read the full sorting

Propositions in this topic

True or false? The answer is given; the reasoning behind it comes with the exercise.

Situations in this topic

Each situation below is already sorted: yours, not yours, or both. That sorting is the exercise.

Practice this yourself

Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases · Questions or suggestions