Empathy
The quaint old phrase ‘fellow feeling’ is not used much these days. The word ‘empathy’ is more in vogue if you are trying to explain something beyond sympathy. Those kind condolences, that sad smile or hand on a shoulder may convey sorrow that you genuinely feel for a person in grief. Such sympathy may be shown with flowers, a baked cake or a cup of coffee but it is something less than empathy where that sorrow is deeply known and understood because it has been part of your experience too. You’ve walked that walk along that path and in those shoes, fully engaged, feeling the slope of the hill of sorrow and the hard ground through the soles. Comfort from a friend who truly empathises is akin to someone walking with you and carrying your backpack to ease your load. These swaying reeds speak of God’s empathy with us.
- ‘The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy’ – Meryl Streep
- ‘Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms’ – Sterling K Brown
