Cultivating empathy

Empathy enables us to deeply appreciate other people who encounter the world differently from ourselves.

- GEOFF MARLOW

Understanding why others see the world differently from us helps cultivate empathy.

Unlike sympathy - which means being so affected that we get pulled into the same state - empathy allows us to help them by retaining our own resourcefulness. Put simply, with empathy, a problem shared is a problem halved.

With sympathy, a problem shared is a problem doubled...

It is easy to empathise with those who see the world the same way we do. But when others see things differently, the knee-jerk reaction is to judge them as mad, or bad, or both. You do not need to look further than today's highly charged atmosphere of political polarisation to see where this eventually leads.

The key realisation that unlocks the capacity for empathy is recognising that none of us ever sees the whole picture in any situation. In effect, all that each of us ever has is a two-dimensional perspective on a three-dimensional reality that none of us ever sees in its entirety. In other words, none of us has access to the “God's eye” perspective.