I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.
You can die from someone else's misery — emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.
But we must not suffer over the suffering.
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
You have to learn how to care about people without taking on all of their problems.
We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them.
I want to help the helpless, but I don't want to help the clueless.
I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.
I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.
Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.
I've made apologies to people I needed to, but I can't apologise to people I don't know for things they don't understand.
We must broaden the definition of who our neighbors are, and extend the boundaries of our interest and empathy.
The way to truly help someone is for me to not get immersed in their suffering.
If someone decides they're not going to be happy, it's not your problem. You don't have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.
Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.
Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether.
Learning the edges or limits or sources of friction in empathy was one of the big issues for me.
