Compassion In Lydia Davis's The Old Dictionary

In Lydia Davis’s short story, “The Old Dictionary” a person reflects on how they treats things. It is pointed out that he or she worries more about a book and not his or her own son. This dictionary means more to that person than their own son. A child needs looking after as well as plants and pets. A book is something to sit on a shelf, not something to focus a life around. Maybe somethings are looked after more because they require less demands than other things, but does that mean to not give enough attention to the things that require more? People focus on loving and caring for things that do not need it and spend less time focusing on loving and caring for the things that do need it.
Lydia describes how this parent treats their son badly …show more content…
One cannot go without food or water. A book on the other hand requires no water, food, sunlight, or anything else to survive. A book is not a living organism, Lydia writes, “Maybe I am kinder to things that are not alive. Or rather if they are not alive there is no question of kindness”. Kindness is something not everybody is good at. Therefore, some people are kinder than others. Compassion comes with kindness. If one is not kind then one is not compassionate. Compassion is caring for somebody, it is opening up your life to another person’s life. The last thing Lydia writes is, “I leave it alone a good deal of the time.” If something is wrong, one should not leave it alone. Maybe give it some space but letting it be alone too long can cause more damage than what there was to begin …show more content…
Though we may know what a person needs, we may not always have it. We may not know how to give it to them in the way they need it. That goes back to the last paragraph about kindness. We may be being kind, but others may portray it as something else because we are not being kind in the way one expects. It is not easy to know what others want. If it is, it will not be easy on giving them what they want, exactly how they want it. It may take time to give them want is needed, but eventually they will have what they need. Before giving somebody what they need, think about what they need it for, Lydia says, “I treat it with respect. I stop and think before I use it. I know its limitations”. It is easy to overdue something. It is easy to care too much and to love too much. Loving too much can cause a person to become somebody they said they would never become. It can cause that person to do things they never would have done in a million life times. Respect oneself while respecting those