Life & Therapy

Years ago, a friend and I were walking across a street because the light was green and we had that little walking symbol saying it was our turn to walk. Midway through the intersection, the car we were walking in front of started forward for no apparent reason; the light had not changed. We yelled loudly to let the driver know that she was about to run us over, and we were understandably upset since we both felt that we’d almost gotten injured or killed. Instead of apologizing, the driver screamed at us: “Have a little empathy! There’s a war!” (the Iraq war had just begun that day) and then drove away. Funnily enough, I’d automatically empathized with her even while she was unknowingly driving forward. Who hasn’t been so distracted that they make mistakes in traffic? In fact, my empathy for her distracted state made me understand that this person wasn’t purposely trying to kill me, which helped. Even so, my friend and I were entitled to react the way a person reacts when they almost get hit by a car, when they are reminded of their mortality. What she really was asking for wasn’t empathy at all; she was asking for absolution and sympathy. She was asking that we not let her know the negative impact that her actions had on us, and she was angry with us for not making her feel better for almost hitting us with her car. What was entirely missing from the equation was her empathy for the people she had almost run over and her empathy for herself.

According to the Oxford Living Dictionary, empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Some people confuse the word “empathy” with the word “sympathy” which is defined as “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.” In the situation that I just described, empathy allowed me to understand and not take personally the action of this distracted woman who almost hit us. It enabled me to know automatically that she was driving distracted and because of that understanding I was able to yell to her to let her know I was there, the way I would wish to be yelled to if I were about to hit a pedestrian that I couldn’t see in front of me. My empathy may have saved my life, because knowing what it is like to be distracted in a car made me know what a distracted person needs in order to be brought back to focus. Her lack of empathy caused her to feel like a victim: she had no understanding of why we yelled at her, so she took our yelling personally as if we were attacking her. If she’d had empathy, she’d have understood the impact of her actions because she’d be able to imagine what it would feel like to be a pedestrian in the path of a moving car. If she’d had empathy, she’d have treated us how she’d want to be treated if the tables were turned. Most likely, that means that she would have apologized for scaring us and almost running us over. If she’d had empathy, she’d not be asking us to let her off the hook for being a human; she’d be able to do that for herself, and she would be able to accept her mistakes and learn from them.

Empathy is not acceptance, it is not permission, it is not even forgiveness. It is just understanding, and understanding is power.