THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

When Compassion is Hollow Without Proximity

There’s a kind of mercy that means nothing.
It lives entirely in language.

You hear it when a bishop condemns ICE arrests and deportations from a pulpit far from any state border. When a Hollywood celebrity denounces ICE while living behind security gates, armed guards, and mansion staff.

This isn’t compassion. It is rhetorical mercy.

Violence against agents of the law is excused as understandable”—

until blood spills where they walk.

Rhetorical mercy speaks for the vulnerable without ever standing beside them. It demands sacrifice—but always from someone else. From some billionaire’s money. Higher rents. Higher taxes. Higher utility costs. Higher fuel bills. Dumbed-down, crowded schools. Frayed public order. The huge costs are cleverly dispersed, anonymized, and morally outsourced.

The test it refuses is simple. Would you take someone in?

Not as a slogan but in proximity.

I’ve faced that test myself.

At the senior center, I was on friendly, talkative terms with a sixty-five-year-old homeless man. We spoke often. He was lucid, worn down, funny in a dry way—missing his front incisors. One day, knowing I owned a house, he asked if I would let him stay with me.

I said no.

I didn’t say no easily. I felt the pull of it. Winter was coming. Instead, I gave him what I could without crossing the line: a couple of old Army blankets and a jacket. They were never returned. I didn’t ask for them back.

That was mercy with a personal boundary.

In another case, a neighbor’s sixty-year-old daughter—mentally unstable, thrown out by her fed-up mother—began circling our neighborhood day after day. She drifted, confused, vulnerable. Again, I felt the urge to bring her inside my house. Again, I stopped myself. I let her sleep under my juniper bushes instead. My neighbors complained about appearances.

I gave her food. I gave her some coins. And I held the line.

Not because I lacked empathy—but because mercy does not nullify social responsibility.

Those moments taught me something no chant or hashtag ever could: rhetorical mercy becomes real only when it touches—and threatens—your own stability. And even then, it must stop somewhere.

Personal proximity is where rhetorical mercy collapses hollow.

Public figureheads and Hollywood celebrities speak with loud, absolute certainty about what must be done—until the burden becomes personal. Suggest they house a dozen migrants in their own homes, and the blatant proclamations suddenly end. Their moral clarity evaporates. Suddenly, it’s all about abstract systems, unjust structures, and a racist society.

Always about abstract society. Never their living room.

Empathy, properly understood, is not absolution. It is inhabitation. I can inhabit the fear of immigrants—recent arrivals and those here twenty years alike. I can understand the panic that erupts during enforcement actions. Fear compresses judgment. A cornered animal lashes out. Smashes police vehicle windows. That’s human.

But understanding fear does not grant permission for mob violence against a just and legal social order.

When public figures say violence against ICE is acceptable, they’ve now inexcusably collapsed exhortation into endorsement. They turn empathy into emotional indulgence—while bearing none of the risk themselves.

That is rhetorical mercy at its most dangerous.

Real compassion is harder because it requires juggling two truths at once—without dropping either.

Human beings under pressure deserve dignity and understanding.

A society that blesses mob violence against law enforcement—however imperfect—destroys the social order that also protects the vulnerable.

I learned this not from ideology, but from standing at my own door, keys in hand—giving what I could, refusing what I could not.

Rhetorical mercy that never risks inconvenience is empty sentiment.
Empathy without personal boundaries is inviting trouble and chaos.
And charity that demands sacrifice only from others is cheap theater.

Seeing that clearly doesn’t make us heartless.
It makes us honest—about people, and about the house we all live in.

If you’d like more insights, visit RMDellOrfanoAuthor.com under the blog category … Psychology, where conscience, culture, and spirit intersect.

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