Empathy is more than “I HEAR YOU”

 “I’ll slap you if you say another word”, shouts dad at his younger son.

The mother silently removes her husband’s socks and places his shoes on the rack.

“Sorry”, says dad to his younger son.

“Why did you even give birth to me?” shouts son at his mother.

The mother gently places his head on her lap and waves her hand over her head.

“Sorry”, says son to the mother and sleeps.

The mother knew that her husband got abused by his boss at work.

The mother knew that her son couldn’t get selected for the football championship.

Mother is the greatest example of empathy. She vibrates empathy!

So what is Empathy?

Wikipedia say’s, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But I would like you to take a moment to recall a time where you were going through a hard time and someone empathized with you. How did it feel? Pretty good I expect…

For when Mahatma Gandhi said,

“I call him religious who understands the suffering of others”

Relationships, partnerships and friendships all are based on the one basic common factor which is understanding, it plays a huge role for our relationships to work. Through understanding builds respect and acceptance. Parents and siblings, co-workers and all the other relationships require empathy. People like when they are understood, it builds trust and the same person is more likely to reciprocate the effect.

Empathy seems to be a very common word for some of us (I use it in my CV as one of my strengths), here we thought therapists are made out of empathy and Of-course you must have used it a hundred  times, but what do you convey when you say “I empathize you” obviously you want to say that you understand that person, but do you really?  This world we live in is very complex and so are the people living here, they are like some encryption code; very hard to decipher, people say something different on your face and often they feel something a lot more inside.  A person might be happy or would smile in front of anyone but who knows there must be volcano’s bursting inside.  We here simply believe that empathy is not only what you hear and see about a person but something more, something which the person is hiding inside him.  To feel and display empathy, it’s not necessary to share the same experiences or circumstances as others. Rather, empathy is an attempt to better understand the other person by getting to know their perspective. For one thing, it takes time & effort to understand how and why others feel the way they do. Frankly, we aren’t willing to invest those resources for too many people, and even when we’re motivated to show empathy, doing so isn’t easy. But when done they will know that stronger bonds can exist, that deeper levels of understanding are available, and the key to communication is the very thing they lack.

When you face Failures in life, loosing someone so close to you or any other circumstances, the pain you go through is all yours and at that time you need people to understand what goes in inside you. What happens at that time is people show sympathy, they are there to sympathize, they understand that you are going through a hard time and to tell you, that everything will be fine but putting in that effort and understanding you is what matters.

In the movie Dear Zindagi itself the character of Kaira (alia bhatt) was only able to confront her fears and complications in the front of Dr. Jug (Shah Rukh Khan) after spending time with Dr. Jug, Kaira made him her comfort zone. Turning to him for advice seemed the easiest thing to do. As he was the only one in her life who was capable of empathizing her.

Take-away:

• Find someone you can talk to who will really listen to you and encourage you.
• Those who are hearing you out patiently give them a listening ear too
•  Ask yourself, “What is this person feeling?” especially in those sticky situations.
•  When you understand others, they’ll probably want to understand you – and this is how you can start to build cooperation, collaboration, and teamwork.

So here I would end this awesome write up by a beautiful quote:

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels; I myself become the wounded person.” 
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Have you ever felt like someone has empathized you or you have empathized someone. Please do share your view in the comment section below.

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