Why Empathy Can Be Overrated
Empathy is a beautiful practice. It activates our imagination and allows us to see the world from another’s vantage point, to “step inside another man’s shoes” as Atticus Finch instructed Scout.
My fourth grader knows what empathy means. Her teachers have reinforced it to her every year since kindergarten. Over the past decade the term has managed to lodge its way out of academia and TED talks into the very center of the Zeitgeist. Empathy is all over our public schools and human resource departments. Heck, even the Emmy sweeping, loved-by-the-masses Ted Lasso quotes Brené Brown.
I’m grateful for it. We’re better for it. But while empathy is a vital part of our collective journey as humans traversing the 21st century together, it’s not the final destination. There’s another term we can teach, one that still feels as inaccessible as empathy used to, conjuring images of charity work, austerity, and sainthood.
Compassion.
Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Compassion doesn’t require imagination like empathy. It doesn’t invite us to close our eyes and conclude, “that must be hard.” Compassion reminds us that we are all in the same boat awakening us to the realization that while someone might seem to be living in a very different climate than ours, at some point or another, we all experience the change of seasons. In math terms, compassion invites us to identify the lowest common denominator between us and our fellow human beings.
Contemplative Judy Cannato writes,
Compassion draws together those who have been estranged or never even dreamed they were connected. Compassion pulls us out of ourselves and into the heart of another.
Where empathy urges us to imagine, compassion helps us time travel. It breaks us out of ordinary time and into a future or past where we too have experienced what our neighbor is currently going through.
Perhaps most importantly, compassion requires action. If your suffering is my suffering, I’m compelled to treat you the way I hope to be treated. I am pulled in the direction of justice.
Action doesn’t mean we spring into “fix-it” mode. It doesn’t always mean we have to start a non-profit or move into an underprivileged neighborhood (although we need those who are willing to do these things). Action often begins with a question rather than an answer:
“What would be most helpful to you?”
We don’t have to be saints to start sowing a common compassion among us. We can start with empathy and make small, kinetic steps toward solidarity, stagger out with wobbly feet into the adventurous practice of harmonizing imagination with action.
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