We have to withdraw the statistical mind, which is often the way we treat the suffering of others. We think about it in terms of huge statistics. We sometimes do it in terms of social work, in hospitals or somewhere, where we go through training – necessary perhaps, and useful training processes — but then come to treat the patient or the case as if they were just a textbook study. To love humanity means we have to be able to treat every member of humanity as a unique individual. Here we come to the great difference between compassion and pity. Pity is where we may love someone who is suffering, but that love is still in touch with our own fear. When we see the suffering of another, for example, when we see somebody dying, we cannot help but fear our own death. And if we are controlled by that fear, even unconsciously, we pity the person who is dying. “Poor thing,” we say. Where our love meets the suffering of the other person and escapes this dynamic of fear, breaks through this dynamic of egocentric fear in ourselves, we no longer think of the other suffering person as a poor thing, we think of them as ourselves. They are not separate from us.
( Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
