The Best of Jack’s Winning Words – Reposts from the blog of the late pastor Jack Freed. Originally sent July 1, 2015
“Be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, and tolerant of the weak, because someday in your life you will be all of these.” (G.W. Carver) Often I can go into a gathering of people and know that I have once been the age of each person. Empathy is the ability to feel as others feel. People would be better able to understand poverty, ageism, homelessness and racism if they had experienced it. If you can’t be empathetic, try to be sympathetic. 😉 Jack
When I Googled sympathy, I got the following response that was generated by the Google’s AI bot – Sympathy and empathy are both emotional responses to another person’s situation, but they differ in the depth of the emotional connection. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone’s misfortune, while empathy involves understanding and sharing their feelings. In essence, sympathy is “feeling for” someone, whereas empathy is “feeling with” them.
Empathy is the harder of the two, since it requires you to have had the same experience or to imagine what the other person is feeling in this situation. You may wonder what the other person is feeling and experiencing, but you will likely not be able to “put yourself in their shoes”. There are a few emotions that most people experience, like the sadness at the loss of a loved one; so, if the moment at hand is one of those, then you may be able to empathize. More likely, in most encounters moving on to sympathy is the best choice.
The line, ” I know how you feel” is best left unsaid in any case, even if you have experienced something similar in your life. You really don’t know how they feel. That s especially true when you are dealing with cases of discrimination. No matter if it is racial discrimination or discrimination based upon religion, sexual orientation or any number of other examples. If you are not a member of the same class of people who are being discriminated against, you have no real basis for empathy and need to focus upon sympathy.
Expressing sympathy almost always involves offering help in some way. It’s the “is there anything that I can do for you” response. Finding something that you can “do” for the person with whom you are sympathizing helps both them and you. For both of you it involves breaking out of the emotional state that you were trapped in and refocusing upon the present and upon things that are needed to go on in life, things that need to be done.
So, try empathy first, but move on to sympathy and find a way to help. That will help both that other person and you move on with life. Sometimes you may just need to let that person cry on your shoulder for a while. When the crying stops, give them a hug and ask what you can do to help them right now. That may sound a little cold and calculating, but it is one of the best ways to help the person with whom you are sympathetic.
I have purposely left out any mention of prayer because that is something that should not be forced into your response. If you know the person well enough to know whether they have a strong faith that can be tapped into, prayer can be very powerful tool to help. It may help you if you quietly ask God for his help in your own response of sympathy. Perhaps praying aloud for God to bring his comfort and peace to the person that you are trying to help would help reset their frame of mind. Maybe that’s how you can help.
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