Have you ever seen or met someone who has the ability to understand and share the feelings of others? They put themself in someone else’s shoes and feel what they might be feeling. They are people with empathy.
These gentle souls are kind, caring, and supportive towards others, even if they haven’t experienced the same situation. They connect with people, show compassion, and build meaningful relationships.
"Do no talk about your riches in front of the poor. Do no talk about your good health in front of the sick. Do no talk about your power in front of the weak. Do no talk about the joys of you life in front of the sad ones. Do no talk about your freedom in front of the captivated. Do no talk about your children in front of those who cannot have any. Do no talk about your parents in front of the orphans, for their wounds cannot withstand more pain." - Imam Ali (A.S.)
Two of the most beautiful traits that make us human are Empathy and compassion. Both of these traits are two wings of the same bird.
Feeling someone's pain is empathy. Taking action to lessen or relieve that pain, is compassion. In other words, compassion is empathy in action and your actions don’t necessarily have to be big.
Compassion is the desire for all sentient beings to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. It is the desire to alleviate and prevent suffering. Kindness, love, forgiveness, assertiveness or tenderness are ways of being compassionate.
To be compassionate sometimes means having considerable courage and wisdom to rise above personal needs and interests, like firefighters, soldiers, or health professionals who risk their lives in hospitals during a certain epidemic. People who stand up against injustice even if they are all alone are another example. Whereas being compassionate could also mean having skilful empathy for the creation, like psychotherapists. The three things that bind these behaviours are strength, courage, and wisdom. It requires strength to engage in suffering; it requires wisdom for courage to be prudent, and it requires courage for the wisdom to be effective.
"Empathy is a gateway to compassion. It’s understanding how someone feels, and trying to imagine how that might feel for you — it’s a mode of relating. Compassion takes it further. It’s feeling what that person is feeling, holding it, accepting it, and taking some kind of action. - Thupten Jinpa, Author, "A Fearless Heart".
Feeling someone's pain is empathy. Taking action to lessen or relieve that pain, is compassion. In other words, compassion is empathy or mindfulness in action and your actions don’t necessarily have to be big.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ―
Praying to God to relieve someone's pain; giving your full attention to someone who really needs to talk; giving your jacket to a homeless person in freezing cold or pouring rain, removing a stone lying in the middle of the road; placing food and water for birds outside your home - all these acts of empathy and compassion sometimes may appear to be small but they're huge enough to change someone's life. Your sincere smile can help and inspire a person lost in deciding between giving up or moving on, come out of the sea of negativity.
A study led by Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, showed that with just seven weeks of practicing compassion, participants were found to have increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. It’s also been proven to decrease your bias toward others, decrease migraines and emotional tension, and increase gray matter in our brains.
Sadly, due to our materialistic approach to life we're letting go of these beautiful divine traits. We're replacing them with indifference, greed, arrogance, and selfishness.
Empathy and compassion are the soul of humanity. Without them it's like a foul smelling corpse.
Relations are based on feelings, not blood. If there is feeling then even strangers become our own, if there is no feeling then even our own become strangers. Imam Ali (A.S.)
Read Steve Maraboli's beautiful quote about Empathy, Compassion, and Life here.