The Wimp Mentality.

You know, it’s occurred to me over the past week or so that nobody can fully appreciate another’s suffering unless they have direct experience of it themselves. However well you describe it, however extravagant the adjectives you use, and however much another person can understand that it must have been very unpleasant, they can never know how it actually feels. And that makes me suspect that to have true compassion and empathy with a sufferer, you really need to go through the same level of suffering yourself.

It further occurred to me that I have deplored the causing of suffering all my life. As a kid I would never join in with the nasty things other boys did to frogs and other small creatures. Where I was able, I always stopped it. I begged my stepfather not to hurt the little mouse that was running around my bedroom one night, and when he ignored my pleas I went into a bit of a desperate and feverish state. And for all that I have come to understand an awful lot about human nature, the wanton causing of pain remains a mystery to me. Some would say that I was, and remain, a wimp; I always thought I was in the right.

And having gone through the experiences of the past week – especially on Thursday – I feel surer than ever of my rightness. Never again will I condone war except as the very last, desperate option of defence or to stop the suffering of innocents at the hands of the guilty, for now my inherent objection to the hurting of people or any other sentient being has become more implacable than ever.