The world doesn't just revolve around you. There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit.
Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person's feelings and of one's own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.
Maybe the biggest problem is that there's no empathy. Nobody puts themselves in the place of others. Everyone thinks they are the only one to suffer. Or that they're the only ones who like ice cream or take their kids on vacation.
When people are really suffering, and we know they're suffering, that question can be a very difficult one. Inadvertently, I think without anyone meaning it, it communicates a lack of empathy.
Imagining someone else's pain with too much surety can be as damaging as failing to imagine it.
And I completely am one of the most sensitive in that area as far as the NFL is concerned.
Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.
I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.
When they know what makes you cry, they know what hurts you most. Don't give your enemies that.
I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.
