WORTHWHILE SYMPATHY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 239, 27 September 1930, Page 14

WORTHWHILE SYMPATHY

TO HELP THE WORLD. ALONG. Some people seem to think that sympathy und pity are tho same thing. But are they? Doesn’t sympathy suggest eomething wider, bigger, fuller than pity! Doesn’t it mean entering into every bit of experience in other folks’ lives and making it more or less a personal affair! What a lot of happiness would bo dimmed if wo couldn’t slip round tho corner and tell it out to a neighbour heart! What would bo the joy of success if no one cared! Such a deal depends upon tho tact that there’s some one who is ready to laugh with us, to rejoice with us, aud to give thanks with us. It isn’t only in big things that real sympathy matfers; it is in tbe trivial odds aud ends that make up so much of our commonplace lives. The gin who has saved up for a now summer gown needs a word of interested sympathy as to its style, colour aril texture, just as much as tho head of the family who contemplates buying a house mid lot needs it. When tho young people have a love affair there is often real pleasure to them if a kindly, dicreet car listens to “what be said” or “how she looked.” Aud mother takes her stocking bug over the way to Auut Eliza’s sometimes, because she knows the old lady won’t be bored at tho stories of what James has done in his exams and the reason why this year’s jam was a bit of a failure. Tho very knitting of a sweater may be rendered a thrilling matter if Doreen gives Mabel her taste sympathy as to what is Mabel's colour.

Of course, in drab times and bitter hours of blackness, sympathy walks with grand healing strides along our life ways. In stress aud storm and loss wc cling with the grip ot desperation to the strong friends who understand and pass some of their own valor on to our fainting spirits. But on, tho lovely flowers of sympathy that star tho spring lanes of life! The fragrance of smile and laughter that drift across the fields of happy days! Don’t let us forget or belittle them; they mean so much that is beauty touched —and happiness is incomplete if chums fail us, perhaps because their hearts are not big enough to let gladness as well as sadness in!