How Powerfully Others Affect You

(Found here)

“Man was made for eternal happiness, and if he refuses it, he will have eternal sorrow. Joy and sorrow, therefore, are no superficial things; they are the heights and the depths of our nature. It is a strange thing that whatever else each of us can keep to himself independently of the whole world, no man is independent in his joys or his sorrows. The veriest stranger whom we have never seen before can for a moment cloud our happiness or cast a ray of sunshine through the darkness. The passing of a fellow creature in the street, a face seen for a moment in a crowd, can haunt us for days with a feeling of distress. Anyone can rob me of my joy for a moment at least; anyone can give me some momentary passing pleasure. A word, a look, and I bear about with me for the whole day an open wound. Or again, some kindly word of encouragement opens a spring of joy that makes the whole world look brighter while it lasts.

I doubt if any combination of mere circumstances can give us such happiness or sorrow as one human being can give. No bodily pain is half so acute as the pain that one man can inflict upon another, and no happiness is so deep as that which comes from human fellowship. The presence of one person can destroy the happiness that every circumstance of life combines to produce, and the saddest and most unhappy surroundings can be forgotten or transformed by the presence of a loving friend.

What power lies in personality! All the events, surroundings, consolations, and sufferings of life sink into insignificance before it. A little child can do more to gladden his mother’s heart than everything the world has to give her. Two human beings wrapped in one another’s love can see the world go to wreck and ruin without a sigh. And truly, ‘the light of the whole world dies when love is gone.’ Yes, one person has more power to give joy or sorrow to another than all the wealth and influence in the world. The heart cannot rest or find its satisfaction in these things; a person steps in among them and changes them all. The presence of an unloving husband or wife has often turned all the wealth and material comforts and social enjoyments the world has to give into ashes. And pinching poverty and constant ill health and grinding work have been transformed by the presence of love.

It is undoubtedly true that each of us, men and women, irresponsible and thoughtless as we often are, hold within our hands the happiness and sorrows of others. We cannot help it or escape from it. The power is in us inalienably almost from birth to death — in us, because we are persons — and we are responsible for the use we make of it. Indeed, so mysterious is this power that the very presence of a person who does not realize his responsibility is often the source of the keenest pain of all. What greater misery is there than to be linked to another who ignores you, who shows neither interest nor concern in your doings, neither blames nor approves, neither loves nor hates, but freezes you up by the blight of an absolute indifference. It would be easier to bear aggressive dislike.

The failure to exercise the power to give happiness to others is not merely negative in its results; it is the source of the most positive suffering of all. Thus there is no escape from the responsibility involved in the possession of this power. Not to use it where it is due is to destroy all happiness.

. . . The presence of love, wherever it is, in however obscure a person, will at least do something toward lightening the sorrows and securing the happiness of others; and hate equips the most insignificant with an instrument that works sorrow.”
~Basil Maturin