I am continually reminded of my own ignorance. My own inability to gauge people. I find that I can read people well, but I often have difficulty realizing just how they will respond when they are in that place. Over and over again I read a persons place correctly, what they are thinking and feeling, yet totally am blown away by their reactions from that place.
So this leads me to some questions. How do you have empathy?
Obviously empathy is not simply being able to read where a person is at and understand what they are going through. There must be another step that causes us to try to "put ourselves in their shoes" and understand what decisions they are going to make and the severity of those decisions.
My problem is I don't know how to do that. Because the emotion is not real to me, because I am not experiencing the same thing (no matter how hard I try) I simply cannot truly identify with the person enough to understand what decisions they will make.
Maybe one of you has some help for me. I certainly need it. Or maybe I don't? Who knows?
Maybe if I was able to be in their shoes it still wouldn't change anything... At any rate I want to know what you think.
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1 comment:
I don't know Ken. I'm dumbfounded when it comes to empathy. Being "mercy motivated" you would think that I would know just an "inkling" about putting myself in someone else's place. I know that there have been people that I have cared very deeply about... I don't think words could express how I felt about those particular people... but no matter how hard I tried to express my heart toward them, it was completely taken the wrong way. Letting go was the only option I had, and it was the HARDEST thing I've ever done; (especially when I saw them on a consistent basis)... in doing that I'm letting "go" and letting "God" -I CAN'T DO ANYTHING!
...I don't think that really helped at all... but that's my thought on that.
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