Cultivate Empathy

The world would be a better place if we had more empathy for one another. The more you learn about another’s history and burdens, the better you can understand why they act the way they do. Perhaps the adage is true that to know all is to forgive all. Compassion springs from understanding, and understanding from identifying with the other, and somehow finding yourself in the other and the other in yourself.

Many of us evidence xenophobia, the fear of, if not animosity towards, strangers. That includes the fear of strange, of that which on the surface at least, is different from our accustomed way of being and doing. Instead of seeking to understand the common humanity beneath the differences, the ways we are similar, we close ranks into the camps of “us” and “them.”

The truth is, as Carl Sandburg put it, “Yes, you too, too, too are people.” Will Rogers said he never met a person he didn’t like. I cannot go that far, but I will say that I never met anyone with whom I couldn’t identify and empathize, and that the concerted effort to do both has been a never-ending source insight and meaning. The truth is, as Kahlil Gibran wisely said, you cannot rise higher nor fall lower than that which is in every person. We are all in this together, susceptible to the same desires and dis-eases, joys and sorrows.

The process of empathizing, of identifying and feeling with another, is a going over and coming back. You seek to go over and stand in the other’s shoes; you seek to understand that person from within – without judgment. Then you come back and stand in your own shoes, and discern what you’ve learned about the other and yourself. Again, without judgment.

I am yet to see someone react negatively to another’s sincere attempt to understand them from within, to empathize. If that doesn’t win friends, it dissipates hostility.

I remember an experiment when I taught psychology at Iowa Wesleyan College. It was a course on human communication, and two male students were having trouble getting along. One was an African-American from Chicago, and the other a White from a town in Pennsylvania. The former accused the latter of racial prejudice, which the latter could not really deny, yet refused to affirm.

One afternoon during class, we put two chairs back to back and had them sit facing each other, off in the corner of our large classroom. We tied their hands together so they could neither get up nor strike one another. I told them to talk out their differences, so they could begin to understand each other. For safety’s sake, I had a couple of large football players keeping an eye on them.

After several minutes and a few tense exchanges, we heard some laughter. They seemed to actually be enjoying each other. The turning point came when the White student realized that the Black student was as prejudiced against him as he was against the other. He pointed this out and the other could not deny it. Rather, the Black student laughed at the realization of his own prejudice. They had succeeded at empathizing, at identifying with each other. They found their common humanity beneath their racial differences. And they were later seen hanging out together on campus. From the common arose the beginning of a bond.