"How can you spare someone's feelings by denying them?"

In the movie "Tuesdays with Morrie," Mitch starts to feel uncomfortable when Morrie starts to tear up. Mitch attempts to look away or check his cell phone. Morrie all of a sudden confronts Mitch about this, he states "You feel uncomfortable right now, don't you." Mitch timidly admits his anxiety. His immediately stammers he didn't know quite what to do, he says he guess he was sparing Morrie's feelings. In our American culture today, certain behaviors such as sadness, anger, and embarrassment are seen as types of behaviors that should be spared. Sometimes this is true, but not the way most of our culture handles it. Denying someones feelings, because it makes you uncomfortable, is not the same as sparing them to make the other person feel better. Morrie teaches Mitch a lot about breaking certain taboo barriers in order to create bonding relationships. Societies create taboos, because they decide that a certain type of behavior makes their society uncomfortable. But taboos such as someone of old age "having to get their ass wiped for them" come into play, these are issues in which people have no control over. This isn't fair for someone's feelings to be denied or ignored just because something is happening to them, that is out of their control. I learned a lot more about respect when I heard this quote.