I write about empathy quite a lot on here, as I feel it’s a valuable skill that we should all be looking to improve. However, if you have empathy for a situation but don’t do anything about, was the empathy of any real value?
In her book “Radical Candor“, author Kim Scott shares this story from the teachings of the Dalai Lama:
Picture yourself walking along a mountainous trail. You come across a person being crushed by a boulder on their chest. The empathetic response would be to feel the same sense of crushing suffocation, thus rendering you helpless. The compassionate response would be to recognize that that person is in pain and to do everything within your power to remove the boulder and alleviate their suffering. Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action.
Empathy is a wonderful skill to continually develop, but action must follow it. You likely see a lot of this on Facebook, where something bad has happened and people simply share their empathy as a response. I saw a recent post about a family that lost everything in a fire; the first 50 responses were essentially “thoughts and prayers”, but way down the line was a guy that shared a GoFundMe link for the family and encouraged people to focus their efforts there.
I suspect that some of the people typing “thoughts and prayers” in this kind situation don’t actually follow through with praying for those people, though I could be wrong. However, if they were to pray to God and get any kind of answer, I think He would tell them “great — now go help them”.
Empathy comes first
All of that said, empathy still comes first. If you were to hear about the house fire and think “well, they were dumb for not having good insurance and for not getting that wiring inspected“, you’re unlikely to want to do much to help them anyhow. However, if you feel the empathy and want to help, then go do something about it.
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