Empathy

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The kids watch a show called "Daniel Tiger" on TV. Sometimes, I watch this show with them, and I think it's pretty good because occasionally they teach kids (and grown ups) about how to deal with negative emotions. They don't expect a person to not feel negative emotions like "anger, "jealousy" etc, but give them reasonable ways on how to handle those emotions.

It was another one of those days, when the kids were getting ready to watch one of their shows on TV. Typically, I end up giving both of them one choice on which show they can watch. Naomi decided that she wants to watch "Strawberry shortcake". Daniel gets scared of some of the shows on TV, and he was scared when he heard that Naomi wanted to watch that one. So, he wailed and ran upstairs and locked himself in the bedroom. 

Naomi went upstairs to tell Daniel that he can come downstairs, and they can watch something else. Daniel was so happy when he heard that. He hugged her and said "Thank you for showing empathy, Naomi". I was taken aback that he even knew what that meant. He learnt about that from "Daniel Tiger", where they describe empathy as "think about how someone else is feeling".

Dev always talks about empathy, as an important trait that he wished he had and how he wants the kids to be empathetic as well. It got me thinking on how in a self-centered world, thinking about how someone else is feeling does not come naturally at all. 

As a kid, my sister constantly suffered from migraines, allergies and skin problems in  her feet. She would often tell me that I didn't care enough about her to ask her how she was doing. This was silly to me, because I lived with her and knew how she was doing. I also did many practical everyday things to help her. But, this didn't seem enough. 

It took me a decade to figure it out, but sometimes it takes more of an effort to inquire about people. To genuinely care about how they are doing. Because, most people don't think about someone else. We are too pre-occupied with our own things. Empathy is rare. When you meet an empathetic person, it blows you away because you have come face to face with something extraordinary.

"Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It is the capacity to understand that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own. People may forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel".



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