Empathy as connector and therefore healer

The kindness in empathy is a gift given to another in the desire to discover what they think and how they feel.  But it’s also a gift given to ourselves, because, as we face another’s pain, as we connect with them, we face our own pain, and we connect with ourselves.

By facing another’s pain with them, we meet our own, but from a safer, less confrontational distance than what we would if we stared down our pain in isolation from the other.

This empathy is the power of service, given that the heart behind serving people is a benevolent art for all — those served and those who serve.  So long as there’s a balance and we don’t burn ourselves out in our serving others.

Empathy is also automatically and wholly beneficent to all and necessary for the functioning of any society — whether that’s two people or 200.  Empathy presents an openness for another’s expression and where it’s given and received, love abounds through connectedness, and this is a therapy all itself.  It’s the way that churches are supposed to work.  It’s how sporting clubs and other institutions operate when they’re at their best.

I constantly repeat the wisdom that says, in Jim Eliot’s words, “Wise is the person who gives up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose.”

Empathy operates on this principle of wisdom.  Empathy gives up an attention we could deploy on ourselves and our own struggles, and it deploys that focus of curious care on another equally deserving person who is need of care.

Empathy is a tool a person uses to connect to another so as to detach a little from themselves, yet, as I’ve mentioned above, this slight detachment from self just so happens to allow a safer approach to oneself.  The more we give away, the more we receive.

There is an ancient and an eternal wisdom in diffusion within community.  The smaller we become, the more grateful we are, and bigger the cause we serve, the easier it is to give ourselves wholly to it.  Empathy is an avenue to this reality.

Empathy is also emblematic to ourselves of our benevolent purpose.  In effect, we see ourselves interested in another and we see ourselves as selfless, as kind, as capable of giving.  Confidence grows and we feel safer in our world because we feel worthy.

The more we see our capability grow in the exercise of empathy, the more we find ourselves compelled that it’s a holy purpose of life designed for everyone to engage in.

Empathy truly is a language, the practice, of love.  It’s an inherent kindness.  It’s generosity personified.  It’s the simplest yet most effective way of being human.

For the uninitiated, empathy is about stepping out of ourselves for a moment so we can step into another person’s world, their interests, their desires, their hopes, their dreams.  It’s an invitation to others to reciprocate but we NEVER engage in empathy motivated to give in order to receive.

As we practise an other-centred interest, something happens within us that wouldn’t occur otherwise.  This “inside job” is the blessing of God for the wise, benevolent choices we make.