As my journey to the Garden continues and my ‘quest to love’ expands, I realize there are many crossings that still lie ahead. One of the most important is the one from ‘sympathy to empathy.’ I remember my first thought when I encountered this crossing – what’s the difference between sympathy and empathy?  I, like most people, probably never pondered the difference.  To me, both meant the same, but oh, how I was wrong!

     Webster’s dictionary defines sympathy as feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another as well as the ability to see the world as others see it while being non-judgmental! Wow! I had no idea what an enormous difference there was between the two. So, I began to think about my life and whether I would consider myself sympathetic or empathetic.

     As I reflected on my childhood it was not hard to see that I grew up in a home where neither sympathy nor empathy were virtues to be nurtured. You see, the cumulative trauma I suffered as a child drove me to build a wall of protection around my heart, mind and soul designed to shelter me from pain. Adding to that dysfunctional backdrop the words “shame on you” resonated almost daily in my house and that atmosphere only allowed love to be experienced from a distance. Again, not a good recipe for knowing and expressing sympathy or empathy.

     As I become an adult and after much counseling, I gradually learned to feel for others – albeit, from a safe distance. Yes, I learned to express sympathy for others but still found myself judging their plight. The shame I knew as a boy I now projected on my neighbor. My version of sympathy left others feeling alone and un-loved, and yes, ashamed. I was a hurt individual pouring my unresolved feelings of pity and sorrow on someone else, who was also likely suffering the same. Unwittingly, I was making the pain worse, for both of us! Deep down, I knew one thing. I needed to get a right view of sympathy but more than that I needed to get a right view of empathy.

     So, what does true empathy look like? Let me tell you what my experience has shown. Empathy is the ability to get involved and be vulnerable. Empathy will look at a wounded soul who has fallen in a pit and crawl down in that pit and sit with that wounded soul. Empathy means not only feeling another’s pain but showing up and acting on their behalf. Empathy rolls up its sleeves and gets its hands dirty.  It becomes part of another’s life, the good, the bad and the ugly and does so gladly. Empathy also compels us to express our own vulnerability as we give of ourselves to another not expecting anything in return. In short, empathy is courage!    

     In my quest to love I could never have imagined how my upbringing skewed my view of sympathy and empathy and shaped my need to be, not just sympathetic, but empathetic. Crossing the bridge from sympathy to empathy has literally changed the way I see others and their pain, and my role in alleviating it.  Loving from a distance is no longer an option.  God wants me, us, to love one another deeply and closely. He wants us to be empathetic towards one another and truly carry one another’s burdens!

Dario L. Perla