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GRIFFIN DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE
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* FOR YOU?
• Believe it or not, but good, clean healthy sports
can get you into trouble. It all depends on what kind
of sports you mean and how well you can control
your emotions.
Some of the simpler sports which are actual forms
of work that you do as play seem to be the most
satisfying. These include sailing, rowing, hunting,
walking, climbing, skiing, etc. The invented sports—
football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and so forth—
are, for most people, spectator sports, and this is
where the trouble comes in. Not so much for the
players, but for the onlookers.
A lot of the difficulty from sports comes from
frustration. Almost every boy has dreamed of him-
• Do spoiled kids become spoiled adults?
Yes. You would think that once an
individual reaches chronological ma
turity that he (or she) would have
sense enough to act like a respon
sible, grownup adult. But the unhap
py result proves that psychologists
and other behavior scientists aren’t
just trying to make things easier for
parents. In urging that children be
brought up with love, affection and
guidelines the experts know that
parents can help their children de
velop into well-balanced human be
ings with the potential of achieving
personal happiness and perhaps con
tributing to' the progress of mankind.
Yet if the child does not learn
how to behave in society, it’s just
about impossible for him to unlearn
his spoiled ways when he reaches
adulthood. A student in college, say,
may be able to conquer calculus, but
cannot seem to understand that he
should not expect to have his own
way all the time, even though that
was the way he was brought up.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty in
unlearning spoiled ways is that the
spoiled adult does not know how to
2
self playing the hero and scoring the game-deciding
touchdown, or he may imagine himself stepping up
to home plate in the seventh game of the World Ser
ies, and smashing a 3-2 pitch out of the ball park
for the come-from-behind and winning runs. Unfor
tunately, most of us wind up in the stands or in
front of our TV screen watching some other hero
take the play away from us. At best, we can only
be assuaged by a vicarious connection as we iden
tify ourselves with the viewed hero.
Sports -or at least the watching of them- can
even be blamed for some of the violence that occurs
after a big game between intense rivals. Take a
football game, as does Nedd Willard in "World
be considerate of others. In the col
lege classroom, he will demand the
best seat, he will take up the pro
fessor’s time and even the attention
of the class, because he has only
been used to being the center of at
tention and having his slightest
wish immediately fulfilled. In the
fraternity house (if his obnoxious
behavior doesn't keep him from be
ing “pledged"), he acts as if every
one is part of "his staff," just wait
ing to do his bidding.
Apparently the spoiled individual
cannot learn to correct his behavior
and can’t seem to realize how he is
acting no matter how old he gets.
And while many spoiled children
grow up only to become ostracized
by society, others continue as “prob
lems" but manage to go through
all the usual steps of adulthood, even
finding someone to marry.
I will say this about a spoiled per
son who does get married. That in
dividual himself may not ever be
come but I have never
known any children of a spoiled par
ent that could be called spoiled.
(© 1969, King Features Syndicate Inc.)
• Should a person who craves sympathy get it?
If an individual yearns for sympathy
to such a degree that he could be
called neurotic, let him go out and
seek professional help and guidance.
If you do sympathize with him, he
will feel that you see a connection
between his feelings and yours.
Rather than wanting you to under
stand what his problem is, he hopes
that your sympathy will show that
you are in the same or a similar po
sition as he is in. By sympathizing
with him you will help him evade
the responsibility and reality that
he refuses to face up to.
Actually, what such a person real
ly needs is not sympathy but empa
thy, and generally the only one who
can give it to him is a qualified
psychotherapist. Empathy, as Rob
ert L. Katz, makes clear in “Em
pathy, Its Nature and Uses" (Free
Press of Glencoe), can be a useful
tool if the distinction can be un
derstood between it and sympathy.
“When we sympathize," says Katz,
“we are aware of our own state of
mind and much of our attention is
still devoted to our own needs.”
Health,” the magazine of the World Health Organ
ization. "The tired footballer, amateur or profes
sional, is glad of his shower and a warm meal. He is
a tired worker enjoying his hard-earned rest. But
the agitated spectator has done nothing, his mus
cles have received calls to action as he watched the
game, but have not been allowed to translate them
into acts. His adrenalin has aroused him to fight
and all he has been able to do so far is to shout as
loud as he can."
And if it is the TV sports spectator's wife who
asks him to take out the garbage as soon as he
snaps off the set, you don't have to guess who is
going to get shouted at
When we empathize we cannot ful
ly escape our own needs but we
discipline ourselves to use our own
feelings as instruments that enable
us to learn. Sympathy, he adds,
blunts our sensitivity to others.
When we sympathize with someone,
we are telling him how we feel.
A person who neurotically craves
sympathy may be unconsciously
looking for empathy. That is why
the neurotic’s cravings are never
satisfied, for to him the sympathizer
is only a reflection of his own feel
ings. It does some temporary good
for him to have someone to talk to.
And, of course, no one should sneer
at him or ridicule him. But to get
any lasting benefit, he should be
able to confide in an expert who can
give him the empathy and— with it—
the understanding he yearns for. For
as only an Indian who has in
another Indian’s moccasins can tell
how the owner really feels, so does
it take a professional psychothera
pist to be able to use empathy to
understand and guide a neurotic per
son who craves sympathy.
Sat and Sun., Dec. 2»-29,