Sympathy For Empathy

Sympathy for Empathy

Empathy, defined by the Merriam- Webster Dictionary, is “the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object, so that the object appears to be infused with it,” and also as, “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, empathy, has no synonyms or antonyms. However, upon further investigation into the dictionary it is found that, empathy is used as a synonym for sympathy, or, “an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things

Empathy, at the turn of the century, was described as a “unique combination of cognitive effort and bodily feeling, thought to characterize aesthetic feelings,” and had been described as so for many years, much like, sympathy. Empathy, however, broke off from the word sympathy and has since been deemed differently as, “moral activity and a more specific physio-psychological process in how our brain is hardwired,” but empathy and sympathy are still thought to share key features in the 20th century, and society couldn’t be more wrong in using the word empathy so loosely. Sympathy is merely and understanding of one’s emotional state, where empathy is the extreme sense, awareness, and feeling of another’s emotional

As I sat on my couch, in my nice home, watching TGIF on channel 12 with my family moving about the house, a “Save the Children” campaign came upon the screen during a routine commercial break. I had seen this campaign run many times, and never thought twice about it; I never really cared to pay attention to it. That night, though, I kept my eyes on the screen and listened as the woman explained the life of a young boy who was sporting tattered clothes, and wearing his skin so thin that you could see his bones. My insides started to squeeze me, as if someone had punched me directly in the gut. I continued to watch as she explained how his mother and father had died, leaving only him to care for his siblings. His siblings were so small, I noticed their skin was so thin everywhere except their bellies. Their abdomens were big, round and bloated. The feeling of sadness consumed me, I could feel a hard ache in my chest. I know now, other experiences, that at that moment, it was the feeling of my heart breaking. Thoughts raced through my mind for days, and weeks. Images of these kids, and the thought of them starving, living outside, and with no one to care for them; while I am lounging in my home, with the light on, in my bed. I was sad, stressed, and seemingly depressed. I didn’t want to eat, how could I? Knowing that there were people- children- in this world, suffering. I barely slept and when I did I