Someone tells you that something has gone wrong for them. You feel yourself go warm toward them, and something kind is already on its way out of your mouth. Simone Weil says that warmth is not the thing, and she is blunt about how rare the thing actually is. Let’s read her.
The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.
The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.
Weil separates two things that arrive in the same second. One is warmth, which is a movement inside me — I am touched, I am sorry, I want to do something. The other is attention, which she describes as emptying out so there is room to receive the person as they are. She says the first is common and the second is a miracle.
Her second sentence is the hard one. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. From the inside, warmth feels exactly like attention. It has the same heat, it points at the same person, and it leaves the same impression of having been there for someone.
Warmth costs the person something. What they get back is made of my feeling about their trouble rather than their trouble. The kind sentence tends to arrive early, and it closes the subject — once it has been said, the rest of what they were going to say has nowhere to go. I come away moved, and they come away unlooked-at.
Attention costs me something. Emptying out means going in without my version of what has happened to them and without the useful thing to say, so there is a stretch where I am sitting there with nothing, being no help at all. It also means letting in what is actually happening to them, at full strength, with nothing of mine standing in front of it.
So what are we aiming at. We want to be empty enough, when somebody is in trouble, that what comes in is them.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- A friend starts telling you about something that has gone wrong at home, and you hear “that’s awful” leave your mouth before they have finished the sentence.
- Someone close to you describes a worry you have heard from them before, and you recognise the shape of it in the first few words.
- A person you barely know tells you something heavy, and you find yourself reaching for the sentence that will close it kindly.
In all three the thing to watch is one question, and it has two answers. Am I feeling for this person, or am I looking at them. The warmth usually arrives first, and it arrives fast.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to be less kind. Watch which of the two is happening, and leave it as it is.