Panacea

When she says she’s working on compassion in 2014, but freely admits she doesn’t do empathy, she sparks a debate.  Do you need to be empathetic in order to be compassionate?  Most of us in the conversation agree that yes, empathy is a prerequisite for compassion.  I’m not ready to commit; however, I’m intrigued by this question and want to dig a little deeper.  From a purely academic perspective, vocabulary.com defines the two words like this:

empathy (noun)  – understanding and entering into another’s feelings

compassion (noun) - the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it

I can see why it is tempting, especially for those with a bias for action, to want to skip empathy and go right to compassion.  Empathy is feeling; compassion is feeling plus doing.  Lots of us want to be problem solvers, heading straight to the fix.  The trouble is we often gloss over the feeling part, in favor of getting right to action that will make things better.  We want to get out of the uncomfortableness of feeling which can seem of little value.  When we’re doing it’s easy to see tangible evidence of the support we’re providing.  We busy ourselves with action to avoid the helplessness of living in the emotion.

Empathy gets lost because feelings are impalpable.  We think we’re being compassionate, but as we focus on the action, we’ve inadvertently eliminated the emotion.  To be truly compassionate individuals, we need to do the hard work of feeling; this is ultimately what compels us to act so powerfully humane.

When I look up compassion in the Urban Dictionary, which I love for its Wikipedia-style real-world (and sometimes shocking) interpretations, I see this: “It takes guts to care.”  Not what I’d describe as particularly eloquent, but to the point.  It’s hard to get into other people’s feelings, especially when they are hurting.  It makes us uncomfortable.  We just want to make the pain go away, especially when we’re the person inflicting the hurt. Here’s my case in point:

I ask him if he has New Year’s Eve plans, if he’ll go on a date with me.  He tells me he needs to think about it.  It takes only one heartbeat for the pride and excitement swelling in my chest to deflate; it’s a foregone conclusion that with the need for deliberation, even if he comes back with an affirmative response, the evening is destined to be an awkward disaster.  So I’m more than relieved when his verdict denies me.  He’s cajoling me, though, attempting to make me feel better as I recoil disappointed, discomfited and dismayed.  I put a halt to the text messages when it becomes apparent that he is uncomfortable in my pain and wants me to do his emotional labor by telling him I’m fine.  I know I’m not fine, and I need to give myself the chance to feel the gamut of emotions that exhibiting vulnerability with this invitation fires at me.

This is how we find the guts to care for others, by having the guts to care for ourselves first, doing the hard work of acknowledging, accepting and expressing our own uncomfortable feelings.  We can’t truly understand what another is feeling unless we’ve been there ourselves.  When we sweep our own feelings under the rug we don’t experience what it’s like to live through them and to come out on the other side okay, or maybe even better than we were before we started. 

So here’s what I decide:  I get to feel everything I need to in this situation, and I don’t need to come back to him until I’m done.  For me this means reassuring myself I didn’t misread his oeillade. Attractions are extremely visceral.  We can’t do anything about them, and they are impossible to hide, especially to a keen observer. But we do deny them, all the time.  I wasn’t wrong in my assessment; he just chooses to deny it.  I get to feel proud of myself for my boldness, dismayed by his choice to turn me down, embarrassed for disclosing a feeling he doesn’t share and disappointed that we won’t be going out. And I get to own these feelings outright.

When we do our own emotional labor, practice living in the uncomfortableness pain and suffering bring us, we equip ourselves for empathy. The feeling component of compassion matters just as much, if not more, than the doing. So many times in life there isn’t an action any one person on the planet can take that will right the wrong that’s been done to us.  But knowing that someone understands, cares and is brave enough to sit in the tide of emotion darkness inflicts on us is the most powerful antidote ever made.

Yes, empathy is required for compassion.  If you don’t know where to begin, begin with you.