Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Interpretation
Suffering can create a deeper connection to the pain of others.
Morrie Schwartz reflects on how personal suffering enables him to empathize with the suffering of others, particularly innocent victims in dire circumstances. This profound connection highlights the universal nature of pain and the bonds that can form through shared human experiences, even with those who are strangers.
In practice
In a speech advocating for humanitarian aid, you could use this quote to highlight the importance of empathizing with those who suffer.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.
The friendly smile, the word of greeting, are certainly something fleeting and seemingly insubstantial. You can’t take them with you. But they work for good beyond your power to measure their influence. It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.
Our lives are to be used and thus to be lived as fully as possible, and truly it seems that we are never so alive as when we concern ourselves with other people.
Would not obeying to my mother's warnings, who is at least 25 years older than me, be returning to the past? And rebelling against her would mean ruining my mother's, who, I am convinced that, is a virtuous high woman, heart and evaluations. I do not find this right, either.
I want to touch you in real time not find you on YouTube, I want to walk next to you in the mountains not friend you on Facebook.
I think, don't you, that a girl with any delicacy of feeling couldn't bring herself to marry a man indirectly responsible for her father's death. No matter how much she was in love with him.
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