Merriam-Webster defines empathy as this; the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
So, in other words you can understand to some extent what someone else is feeling. I believe this is something all of us are capable of doing, but we have to want to seek to understand another. There is something of an art to it I think and having experienced the same or similar feelings can help gain this understanding of where another may be emotionally.
Yet when I spend any amount of time on social media, watching television, listening to the radio there appears a total lack of empathy. It is quickly becoming normal to judge another first and foremost. I believe this judging comes from our own position of insecurity. We have learned watching others that if you judge first you deflect any judgment away from yourself. Judgment deflection is a growing vibrant industry and consultants have appeared to help you deflect any responsibility for almost anything you say and do. Cynicism has become mainstream, maybe it always has been, judgment, scorn, ridicule, sarcasm, finger pointing, posturing, virtue signaling, all these actions are void of empathy. They are void of any desire to understand another’s plight, their pain, their actions, their fear.
Empathy demands effort, it demands looking outward, it demands reflection, it demands listening, it demands seeing. These things are in short supply in our always searching world. We search constantly for something other than our own reality, we search for peace, for wealth, for love, for freedom, for empathy. Empathy is an action, that means we must do something to be empathetic, we must put forth effort that may have no direct benefit for us. Yet, isn’t that exactly what we seek, someone else who does something for us that they do not need to do, something self-less, outside of themselves to serve, to understand someone else, to understand us. We must strive to understand, to be aware of, to be sensitive to others. We must rebel against the din telling us its all about us. The message daily is, if you spend all your energy understanding others you will be a hopeless failure.
I made a choice over two decades ago to follow a God that teaches me to see the world differently, to see others as precious gifts, beings created in the image of the divine. I have not always lived this out fully and have succumb to a cynical view of life, of others, of being empathetic. Yet, I always come back to these words, “bear one another’s burdens. And so fulfill the law of Christ.” Just writing the name of Christ will invite scorn and judgment and dismissal of what I am saying, doing, being. My task as a follower of this God is to disrupt the status quo no matter what I think or feel. This disrupting demands I see others as worthy of empathy, worthy of effort, worthy of action, worthy of understanding. The disruptor does not care who that other person is, what that other person has done, where that other person lives, what that other person thinks. This disruptor I follow demands I put forth the action, the effort, the energy, the thought to show empathy. This is the law of the disruptor, it is the essence of the disruption, it is the love that will transform. This empathy I am to give, to act on, to learn, to show, to gain is not a choice it is essential for me to be whom I was created to be. In my quest to be empathetic I will gain understanding, I will be stretched, I will be surprised, I will be scared, I will be real.
Empathy, it is the key that unlocks so many other gifts, gifts of compassion, gifts of forgiveness, gifts of service, gifts of love, gifts of sacrifice. Maybe the best gift this action of empathy will be someone else giving it back to me. Seeing me, hearing me, forgiving me, loving me, serving me exactly when I need it most. You see when we put aside our self filled desires, our inward looking eyes, our ax handled words, our sticks and stones. When we replace them with empathy the world we dwell in will become a little brighter, a little more hope filled, a little more loving, a little more like the one to come. Yes, we have lost the art of empathy in our current home but it is never too late to rediscover it, it has never really left, it is always there waiting to empower, to enliven, to heal, to forgive, to advance, to transform. Take the risk, not the bait and begin to practice empathy.