The Pity About Pity

     There is a growing trend in this country which I believe the Left has deliberately encouraged in order to increase the dependence on government. Dependence being one of the many destructive devices that the Left employs to achieve their goals. This particular trend involves attaching a twisted honor and veneration to those who both practice the destructive emotion of pity, and those who are the target of that pity.
     Pity is one of the worst human emotions because as it emulates one of the best human emotions, compassion, it drains all humanity from the practitioner and the practiced upon. Whereas compassion lifts up both the transmitter and receiver, pity drags both parties down into a chasm of victimhood and hopelessness. Compassion says, "I will help build your strength, if that is what you need, to jump the hurdles placed in your way." Pity only looks at the hurdles with watery eyes and laments their existence.
     I know an exceptional young man who is in high school, intelligent, and full of life. He is also in a wheel chair. He recently lost his older brother, whom he loved very much, to heroine addiction. But he insists on doing things for himself and making his life the best it can be. There is a woman who is a social worker who also knows this young man, and she told a mutual friend that she pities him. I wished she would have said that to me because I would have asked her, "Why? He does not pity himself, what gives you the right to pity him?"
     Pity is a negative human emotion because it only prolongs the torment of the afflicted, and strangles the life from compassion. Pity simply sits on the sidelines of life and drains the strength from the afflicted, while compassion takes an active role in fortifying those who are disadvantaged in some way and making them more self-reliant. Social programs of the Left are entirely based on pity and expel compassion from the arena of public policy. There is nothing less compassionate and more pitiable than making a person dependent on money confiscated from their fellow citizens by government.
     Compassion dictates lifting up, while pity only serves as an anchor that drags down the pitied and the one who pities. Compassion creates self-sufficiency, whereas pity's outcome is complete dependence. Compassion receives its charter from love, pity marches to the music of selfishness and reliance on others. Compassion is Mother Theresa and pity is the modern day Democrat party. For there is no more honorable a thing than a human heart filled with compassion, and no greater profanity than one filled with pity.