Sympathy and Compassion (by Swifty Flame-Anderson)
"However bad your situation may seem, it will seem considerably less bad if you stop bloody whingeing about it."
Imagine for a few moments that you have set your own house on fire. You have a small group of people who you refer to as your close friends. They come over to your house and you invite them in. All the while your house is still on fire.
"How are things?" asks one of your friends.
"Oh, they are OK I guess. Apart from I have set my own house on fire," you answer.
"Oh, never mind. That's OK. We all set our own house on fire every now and again. Here, have some wood and a bottle of paraffin," says another friend sympathetically.
Just then you are all disturbed by a rather loud banging on the front door. You go to open the door and there is wide-eyed stranger.
"Hey! You've set your own house on fire! Get out! Come on. You need to get out of there! Give me that wood. Give me that paraffin." She takes those items from your hands and throws them as far away as she can. "Come on, all of you, get out of there."
Your friends call to you from your front room.
"Come back in, you don't need to listen to that interfering busy-body. Come back in. We all set our own house on fire. It is OK. Everyone does it. Forget about what she says. Come back in. Here, Janet has brought some coal."
Somewhere within this little tale you will find both sympathy and compassion. Can you spot them? Can you spot two smaller words hidden within the words 'sympathetic' and 'compassionate'?
"In the phrase 'things have been going from bad to worse', if you take the words 'bad' and 'worse' and replace them with the words 'giraffe' and 'sausage', things don't seem nearly as bad."
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