Empath, the unsympathetic world will never understand you

It’s such a basic lesson the caring person is destined to be reminded of over and again throughout life: there are those who will exercise great delight of schadenfreude (that is, joy at your suffering) when it bothers you that they don’t care.

They know who they are, and you imagine them sneering right now as they read this with some target in mind.

The irony is these people are often the most offended when people don’t care about stuff they care about, they just cloak it in anger, which is just fear underpinning pride gone haywire.

Now you... you were made with a heart of flesh, and you care, and you can’t stop caring.

You feel where people are at even as they brush past you.

You develop deep and trusting relationships with the like-minded.

And you’re always there for the person in their crisis.

But the point of this article is you WILL be misunderstood, and because being understood is important to you, you’ll go one of two ways with that reality.

It’s either dive down the sinkhole of despair as you protest about the world not understanding you, or you can do what Francis of Assisi did when he lamented the neediness in his own heart—

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

The only way of responding to a constantly hurt and bruised heart is by overcoming that hurt with a purpose beyond it—there’s so much pain in this world, so we redirect our compassionate energies onto others who are in need.

And we connect in truth with our own need.  It’s okay to be needy.  We need to be honest about it.  That’s how we go on past it—by validating what’s true first, then going on past it.

The enemy of love is not always hate or fear; just as much it can be ambivalence or indifference—that dryness of spirit that seems alien to humanity.  The reason ambivalence drives us crazy is we care and can’t stand people not caring, especially when it comes to the things that break our hearts.

There’s a great deal of blessing in the heart of a caring person, but when we’re not at our best that care can morph into unhealthy attachments with ourselves and others.

Empath, you’re going to rub up against a lot of uncaring and even cruel types in your journey of life. Don’t give them the satisfaction to know that your care is a commodity they can burn.

Instead, realise that it’s a powerful force for good when you commit that depth of understanding and insight toward understanding and helping others.

Photo by Ravi Roshan on Unsplash