I have thought very much if sensitivity can be educated or people are born with a certain degree of sensitivity. Are there insensitive people? I rather think there are people who have not been educated to appeal to sensitivity. That the circumstances of their lives are as such that sensitivity is rather harming them than helping them.
Of course, you have often heard the urge: “Don’t take it so hard, don’t be so sensitive!” We are advised again and again to disconnect from everything that hams or disturbs us. But carelessness is not a solution, for the careless man becomes stone-hearted and without love.
The solution is a compromise between sensitivity and affection. Being sensitive means to notice, to pay attention to the world around us. The attention we pay to everything that surrounds us makes us more delicate, beautiful, loved, and this doesn’t mean we will be troubled or become bitter because of our sensitivity. And if our heart starts to sigh deeply because of the wickedness of the world, by this we only resemble the saints and Christ, who sigh for the nation of Israel put to test.
So, the advice that we should hear more often is not: “Do not care,” but better: “Be sensitive, but don’t trouble yourself.”
I am convinced that sensitivity can be educated, cultivated through the benevolence of parents and teachers. A sensitive man has a thousand more reasons to enjoy everything he observes: the sky, the trees, the beauty of the birds or the flowers, the sunset and the sunrise, and sadness and loneliness can have deep meanings for him.
Be sensitive, for being sensitive is to live the fullness of life.
Father Savatie Baștovoi
