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MONDAY MUSE (12 October 2009)
EMPATHY
Our ability to connect with another’s predicament can vary from insensitive
indifference to responsive understanding called empathy. Empathy is distinct
from pity, sympathy and emotional contagion. Pity is ‘feeling sorry’ for
someone in trouble and in need of help. Sympathy is feeling compassion or
concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Emotional
contagion is when we imitatively 'catch' the emotions that others are showing
without necessarily recognizing this is happening.
In 1993, just before Diwali, the Latur earthquake uprooted lives, families and
homes. All of us felt pity and sympathy for the affected people. Some of us
joined the emotional contagion of donating money and material. But the most
valuable lesson came from the families who chose to scale down Diwali
celebrations to the bare minimum… as they would have if tragedy were to strike
their own home. The money was instead spent for relief work.
Andre Gide queried aptly, ‘Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the
same sound as yours?’ Empathy is about recognizing the ‘sound’ of another’s
experience even if it is unlike any of ours. It is about putting oneself into
the psychological frame of reference of another, so that the other person’s
feelings, thinking and actions are understood.
However, empathy should not be an occasional emotion… to be unravelled only in
times of great tragedy. For instance, we cuddle contradictions if we practise
empathy as a response to ecological calamities while ignoring the fact that
they are a result of man-made decisions that trigger the disaster. Hence, we
must hear the ‘sounds’ of struggle of people who strive to save their lives,
lands and livelihoods. Real empathy is about consistency in our actions to be
responsible and responsive human beings.
To BE BETTER at the attitude of empathy…
Let’s move beyond situational sympathy!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
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