| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 5 |
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It is a radical perversion of the law of Christian life, therefore, when one becomes in any way a hinderer of others. Yet there are many people who do this. There are some who do it in a negative way by withholding from others lives, in their care and burden and sorrow, the cheer, inspiration, or comfort, which they have it in their power to bestow.
Sometimes this is done in cold selfishness, from sheer indisposition to lend a hand to a brother or sister. More frequently, however, it is through a lack of sensitiveness to others’ needs and sufferings, a want of true sympathy with human life in its weakness. There are those who have never known pain themselves and have no sense of pain in others. They lack that delicacy of tough, which is needed even when the heart is loving, to impart comfort and inspiration. So it comes that there are many people who are hinderers of others through the withholding of the cheer and help, which they might give.
But there are others whose influence is directly and positively hindering. Instead of being wings to those whose lives they touch, they are weights. They are discouragers. They never have a glad, cheerful, hopeful word for any one; on the other hand, they always find some way to dampen ardor, to chill enthusiasm, to discount hope, and to put clouds into clear skies. They seem to think it a sin to be happy themselves or to encourage happiness in any other person. They find all the shadows in life and persist in walking in them. They magnify small troubles into great trials. They look at little hills of difficulty through lenses of morbid feeling that make them grow into tall mountains.
Thus encompassed with gloom themselves, they make darkness for others, never brightness, wherever they may go. In this way they do a great deal of harm in the world. They make all life harder for those they influence. Instead of being comforters of others, they make sorrow harder to bear, because they exaggerate it, and because they blot out all the stars of hope and comfort which God has set to shine in this world’s night. They make others’ burdens appear heavier, because by their discouraging philosophy they leave the heart beneath less strong and brave to endure. They make life’s battles sorer for everyone, because, by their ominous forebodings, they paralyze the arm that wields the sword.
The whole effect of the life of these people is to discourage others; to find unpleasant things and point them out; to discover dangers and tell about them; to look for difficulties and obstacles and proclaim them. If you meet them with buoyant mood, you will not be long in their company before you will find all the buoyancy stealing out of you under the influence of their disheartenment. If you turn to them in your trouble, you will go away feeling that your condition is utterly hopeless, and will be ready almost to despair.
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