Empathy

Empathy When someone says the word empathy most people think about feeling something someone else is feeling. The word, however, means so much more. Merriam Webster defines empathy as “The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” The definition explains that you are feeling what someone is feeling in a way that you can relate too because you either felt that way or somehow similarly. In the…

Empathy allows me to enter the reality of the polish people by imagining myself in their position. The descriptive language used by the author helped me to understand what the people were feeling at that time. An effective example of this is just a single line, “I said nothing and sweated like a mouse”(Wazyk, 461), and just through that sentence one can feel the fear; the fear that turned a man into a mouse scared for his life. Adam Wazyk has found a way to describe the feelings of his fellow…

Despite the many flaws of the connection between the American Dream and empathy, there is a shared point of origin between the two. In fact, former President Barack Obama has found that the embodiment of empathy has been a common occurrence over the course of his life. After traveling and witnessing the diversity of Illinois, Obama reflects on his experience overall, “By the end of the week, I was sorry to leave. Not simply because I had so many new friends, but because in the faces of all the…

“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself” - Mohsin Hamid In ELA class, I have studied the Kitty Genovese case, themes for the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, and how I feel towards society. The expectations for this class are to understand what is going on in our world in the past and current events. In this class, we have learned about racism, bystander effects, etc. and how they affect our society and what happens in our society. In this class I have studied first-hand…

Empathy is the ability to connect one’s feelings, emotions, and pain with another. To view the world in someone else’s perspective, and not judge them for how they view it, but instead crawl inside the person’s heart and soul. “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks.” To scout, is to explore and discover. If we all observe people’s perspectives and emotions, we’ll be able to intertwine our life with everyone else’s. Empathy is being one with…

Since empathy and compassion is a balance point, then to have a balance, there must be the opposite. If our city doesn't have a level of fear, then what keeps empathy and compassion from tipping over the scale and possibly creating a backlash? Similar to what Thucydides says: "the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must," but, the strong do what they can because that is a sort of harmony. Even if people try to be as compassionate and empathic as possible, there will always be…

Empathy is the ability to understand another person. It is the ability to place oneself in another person’s position and share their feelings and emotions. Besides our intellect and emotions, empathy is what makes humans, humans. Compared to other living beings, humans have the ability to love, care, cherish, hate, forgive, feel pain, become jealous, have perseverance, and be conscious of other beings and their emotions. Empathy is emphasized significantly throughout this book and it is…

Bloom and Jamil Zaki, debate the true meaning and outreaching effects of empathy. Bloom persistently argues empathy as simply understanding and experiencing how another person feels but never acting upon the emotional connection. Acting leads to “feeling… too acutely”, a process prone to tiresome mental activity, high stress levels, and overall, unproductive goals or results. Separating compassion, the act of loving, from empathy, the thought of relating, minimizes the conflict and…

Empathy, a most basic human quality, but how many can define it. Empathy according to the Oxford Canadian dictionary empathy is the power of identifying oneself mentally with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation, but what does this mean? In simpler terms empathy is the ability to share the thoughts and feelings of another being or object. So if that's the definition where can we find examples of this trait that has long been forgotten by society? In Harper Lee’s award…

The concept of empathy is vastly misunderstood, when people hear the word empathy it may cause them to think of sympathy instead, and that simple error can cause one's idea of empathy to be inaccurate. To me, empathy is being able to understand feel what another person is experiencing. Empathy is crucial for resolving conflicts and is extremely useful at almost any job and in relationships of all types. While sympathy is important for comforting people on an easier level, it is not as applicable…