What I Did on Fall Break

I also had the honor of speaking at a local Methodist church one Wednesday during their weekly devotional time. The pastor is the brother of one of my closet friends. He texted me one afternoon and asked me to call him at my convenience. I had no clue of what he wanted, so imagine my surprise when he asked me to come share my story with his Wednesday group. I think he was surprised at how quickly I said yes.

While a small congregation, the minute I walked into their midst this wonderful wave of love and warmth hit me. They immediately made me feel not only welcome, but as though I was not a stranger. Furthermore, you could physically see the love they have for one another. If I had any nerves, they immediately left.

It was a wonderful experience for me to be able to share a few chapters of my personal story. As I mentioned in my talk, some of my chapters are wonderful, full of love and great experiences, while others are ugly and painful. That’s the case with all our stories; life is both beauty and ashes.

As I began to contemplate what I’d write for the first November blog, I knew that I wanted to write on a topic that has been on my heart for weeks – empathy. People seem to thrive on arguing their points; many using it as an opportunity to spew hatred couched in the name of love.

Where there is love, there cannot be hate, yet I see people even in my own small community say they are speaking on behalf of love, while the whole time there is nothing loving in their actions. For someone who has an intuitive gift, it can be overwhelming and disheartening.

The Greek translation of empathy is empatheia. Noted as physical affection or passion, suffering with passion. 

The Latin translation is compassio. Noted as mindful and conscious awareness of suffering within ourselves, others, and the universe. 

Webster’s define it as – The ability to share another person’s feelings and emotions as if they were your own.

The Latin translation with the words mindful and conscious, jumped off the page. For one, to be mindful means that we purposefully focus our thoughts; we are aware. We cannot change things if we are not aware, therefore this implies a sense of hope that we can find our way back. Being a self-proclaimed messenger of hope, this keeps me going.

My husband works for a company that provides third partner customer service for large corporate businesses. In his role, he is a Peer Coach, which is perfect for his personality. He spends his day being an encourager, the one person in your corner to help you succeed at your job. 

Naturally, he shares with me the struggles of his team, and he honestly cares about what is happening in their lives, not just at work. Much to his frustration and surprise, he has found an overwhelming lack of empathic understanding in a large portion of his team. Most are under the age of 35 and seemingly do not even know how to show empathy. They constantly ask, ‘How do I do that?’ Hard as that may be to believe, the fact is if they have not been shown or taught empathy, how do they ever learn what it is or why it is important?

This is not a “pick on the Millennials blog,” because the parents of these children are from my generation. So, the issue lies in what they were not taught or witnessed growing up. Gen X’ers, what happened? 

I am fortunate to have several friends that work in the mental health field. I asked the question, “Is empathy something that is innate within us, or learned?” The response was that we are all born with a certain degree of empathy, but compassion and sympathy are learned.

It would stand to reason if you were empathetic, you obviously must have compassion and sympathy, right? But, can you be compassionate and sympathetic without empathy? I suppose the answer may be yes. You can exhibit sympathy for someone with a broken leg, but if you have never had a broken leg, you may feel the inability to understand what that may feel like. Right?

Complex questions, with complex answers and opinions.

Why then can we not at least attempt to imagine how someone struggling with grief, unhealed past experiences, sexual identity, gender, addiction, or numerous socio-economic conditions may feel like? And perhaps the larger question, why is someone different than us scary?

Complacency, dogma, and misplaced self-righteousness have become a cancer in the heart of our country. It is in our politics, our churches, our schools, everywhere.

Is it possible to love those who are different from us? Is it possible to forgive those who have hurt us? The answer to those questions – love one another as God loves us –  is not coming forth from many of our churches. If the ones called to set the example of the love of Christ have fallen that far away from the side of empathy, how then can we find our way back?

Someone, please tell me how.