ON “A TASK”
Martin Buber said: “To help one another is not considered a task, but the self-evident reality on which companionship is based. To help is not a virtue, but a pulse of existence.… Help, not out of pity – that is, from a sharp, quick pain which one wishes to expel – but out of love, which means to live with others. He who only pities receives from the mere outward manifestation of the sorrow of others a sharp, quick pain, totally unlike the real sorrow of the sufferer.”