Beyond Sympathy

In 1993, just before Diwali, the Latur earthquake uprooted lives, families and homes. Many felt pity and sympathy for the affected people. Some joined the emotional response 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.

Our ability to connect with another’s predicament can vary from insensitive indifference to sensitive sympathy. While sympathy is good, empathy is better! It is beyond sympathy. 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. We may instinctively 'catch' the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening.

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… unravelled only in times of great tragedy. 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 be better at hearing the ‘sound’ before the ‘noise’ happens. Real empathy is about consistency in our actions to be responsible and responsive human beings.

To BE BETTER at the response of empathy…
Let’s move beyond situational sympathy!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.