Empathy can be defined as the willingness to feel and face others’ emotions. Have you ever read a book and cried when something bad happens to a character? An affinity with a person – whether they are make believe or not – grows the more one examines their lives and shares in their trials. It is a defining trait that makes us human and the more empathy we have the more, it seems, we have a soul. Those devoid of understanding another’s plight are often labelled a sociopath or at worst a psychopath if the absence of empathy can lead to the desire to kill. We all have different levels of empathy depending on the person we empathise about. Someone in physical pain can easily be identified with because we know what it’s like to be sore or injured. Those suffering loss or rejection can gain our empathy as we have all been in that position at one time or another.
Sympathy is not the same as empathy, although it is often a natural consequence. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone but not necessarily putting oneself in their shoes. The difference, I suppose, is the desire to understand. It’s all too easy to just feel but to process that feeling and comprehend it is a step further most are unwilling to take. When emotions are raw, in an injustice, for an example, we tend to dwell on the pain caused by the action and do not try to understand why that action has occurred in the first place. For the person who is suffering we can sympathize and possibly empathize but for the one who has caused the sorrow?
As I write I try to listen to all the voices. Those who are suffering often cry the loudest but it is those with the still, small voice that an effort should be made to hear especially. In ‘Dead Eye: Redemption’ Ed Couper is a big man with a small voice. His is the life of multi-faceted pain, pain which cannot be tolerated by his own mind so it breaks apart until it is heard. I found myself weeping at Ed’s dilemmas especially his perceived loss of his child Lous. I knew the truth, that Lous was alive and well, but Ed’s conscious mind could not handle what had happened to him with the divorce of his wife and subsequent removal of their son from the family home. Dead Eye was set loose because Ed could not handle his pain. It took Dr Mal Veere to intervene and try to reconcile Ed to reality. Projections of Ed’s mind, Dead Eye and Veere were an attempt to set Ed free but he could not do that until he conquered his fear of facing his emotions. Being brave enough to step back and examine not just other people but yourself is at the heart of empathy, and something we all tend to avoid.
In ‘The Oracle 1.0’ Sam Coote was a character I felt for especially regarding what happened at the end of the novel. When the life you live is suddenly whisked away to be replaced by something unreal the mind tries its best to cope. With everything once loved removed a conclusion can be reached which is neither right nor wrong: end it. None of us desires to be in pain but for Sam his loss was too devastating to cope with, or so he concluded. Suicide is the ultimate action which empathy has to deal with. It is the ‘thing we don’t talk about’ and if we do not talk then we do not think and if we do not think we cannot empathize. All the sympathy goes to the family who are left behind but what about the person who ‘commits’ self-murder? I am not an advocate for taking one’s own life but I can empathize with the act. Pain in its most tender form can lead a person to extinguish their own light before their time.
If you believe no one is listening, understands, or that they don’t really care, take the time to examine why. Do you empathize as they ought to? Do I? Are our ears open to the cries of those in need or are our minds shut fast to suffering? We can sympathize but why bother when we can empathize.
