Do You Feel Useless When a Friend is Sick?

The short answer is 'probably.' If we look at it in a typical modern utilitarian way, that pretty much ends the discussion.

But is this just one more case when a "failure" really isn't a failure if you adjust your expectations realistically? Perhaps once again the true enemy of the Good is not the Bad, but rather, the Ideal.

I returned to Ouray CO hoping to have a small beneficial effect on an outdoorsy RV friend. We did have a good visit. But medical complications got in the way of doing what I really wanted to do: go on recovery walks with him, and make the point that he didn't have to be athletic superman and indestructible super-Mark to be fun to be with; and to help him focus on the improvement rather than what he normally was capable of doing.

Seen objectively, he has a lot to be pleased with in his life. A zillion hours in the Colorado Rockies, hiking with a wife who loves it as much as he does. Then there is the little matter of two seriously nice houses in a ridiculously beautiful town. But would mentioning that be the least consoling? I doubt it, and it wouldn't be anybody's fault.

Visiting Ouray CO, but failing to be a positive jinx.

But perhaps it's hopeless to be an effective in-the-flesh sympathy card and we should just leave the job to Hallmark. There is actually something disgusting in the "superiority" of the would-be consoler, based on nothing more than having better luck -- for the moment -- than the consolee. Tomorrow the situation could reverse.

There are probably methods that would make a would-be consoler more effective. I suppose I should -- the typical euphemism for "probably won't" -- learn these methods. Something is holding me back. Maybe I don't want to think of a human being as a psychological mechanism. I want them to be an individual human being with free-will, and not a slave to some kind of deterministic manipulation.

Let us put the issue of utilitarian consolation aside and ask if there are other reasons for visiting a sick friend or relative. Once upon a time people would have thought it "fitting." But what does that really mean? Or they might have thought that visiting them "honored" them for the importance they had in our lives. Honor? Sounds a bit archaic doesn't it? What would a social scientist find if they put "honor" in their test tubes?

Well, I don't know much about this. But I am motivated to re-read Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." It's not because my friend is going to die, of course. He is a tough old goat, and I suspect I'll be struggling to keep up with him pedaling up Flying Monkey Mesa next autumn or maybe the one after that. (A classic movie, loosely based on "Ivan", is "Ikiru" by the legendary Japanese film-maker, Kurosawa.)

Rather, Death and Illness are certainly related philosophically and sentimentally.  I can't seem to think about anything without invoking a classic book or movie. And novelists and scriptwriters usually make a subject of Death rather than Disease, perhaps just for intensifying the dramatic effect.