Impatience of the Heart

by Stefan Zweig

one hell of a responsibility you bring on yourself when you bamboozle someone with your pity! Before meddling in any business an adult should give some thought as to how far he’s proposing to take things – other people’s feelings are not there to be played around with! Granted that you deluded these good people from the worthiest, most honest motives, but in this world it’s not a question of how boldly or how timidly you strike – all that matters is what in the end you achieve, what comes of it all. Pity – yes, that’s fine! But there are in fact two kinds of pity. One, the feeble and sentimental kind, is really no more than the heart’s impatience to free itself as quickly as possible from emotional discomfort when faced with another’s misfortune; it is the sort of pity which is not at all genuine sympathy – “shared feeling” – but merely an instinctive defence of one’s own soul against the other person’s pain. Then there is the other kind, which is the only one that counts – unsentimental yet constructive, knowing its own mind, fully resolved to endure everything patiently, compassionately, along with that other person, right to the limit of its strength, and even beyond that limit. It is only when you see things through to the end, the real, bitter end, and you have great, great patience, that you can genuinely help others – only when genuine self-sacrifice is involved, only then!’