And even more important, did you even notice?
Empathy as defined at Wikipedia is the capability to share and understand another’s emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes.” And from the Webster Dictionary: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Sounds like an extremely valuable ingredient to a healthy relationship, community or world.
But for some of our Congressional leaders, Empathy is not appropriate for Supreme Court Justices. How tainted did the discussion leave Empathy without most of us even realizing it? Did we really see what happened? When will a political figure use the word Empathy to describe her/his qualifications?
There are those amongst us who do not experience emotions or who have not been in situations that evoke deep emotions. They most certainly would not stand for Empathy as one of our highest expressions of compassion and caring. To them thinking and reasoning is the end of all discussion. And, of course, it is their thinking and reasoning that is all important. Agree with me or be my enemy.
However, human beings are multi-dimensional beings. Their highest experience and maturity comes with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual (not religious) experiences and integration. To downplay Empathy locks humans out of the higher regions of experience which are the very ones that refine and evolve.
A similar tainting has been done to females by denigrating and devaluing their intuitive nature. Over the years, many women hid their unique gifts and insight to the world’s loss.
Be aware and take back Empathy as a word that describes an aspect of humanities highest nature.
