Watching Daredevil

I was watching season 3 of Daredevil the other night when I heard an interesting quote from the priest as he spoke to Karen. He noticed her sadness and she was surprised how transparent her feelings were. The priest said, to her,"Someone once said, 'Everyone is fighting a battle of their own, that you can't see, but sometimes you can see it.'" The quote caught my attention. I agree with that statement; we never know what other people are struggling with and if we find out, we should not minimize that struggle.

I was curious as to the source of that quote. A search on the web revealed that the source is somewhat disputed. Most quotation website attribute the quote to Plato, but that attribution doesn't seem right. After a little more digging, I found that the quote belongs to Ian MacLaren, the pen name for John Watson, a Scottish Presbyterian minister (1850-1907). A more accurate quote (but still somewhat disputed) is, "Be pitiful [compassionate], for everyone is fighting a hard battle."

The sentiment behind the quote comes from a book, The Homely Virtues, published by Watson in 1903. I found the book on Google Books. After reading a couple of chapters, I found it to be a great book. The book focuses on what it means to be a good man. In our culture, as in others in the past, we tend to focus on people who have achieved public notoriety as being great. Watson argues that we need to see greatness in the ordinary. I have believed this for years, but haven't found a writer who has expressed this as well as Watson. I plan to explore his writings in this blog.

To conclude this post, here is a quote from the book that expresses the sentiment from Daredevil:

The man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavoring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him no help his lower self.