Empathy: Do you REALLY understand..?

Alright people, I've got good news, and I've got bad news. Which do you want to hear first?

Well, I'm deciding to tell you the good news first, because I feel like it. The good news is that I'm going in the army next week, so your favourite monthly (or bi-monthly) blogger will soon be BLOGGING EVERY WEEK! Yahoo! Whee! Awesome! Give me a five, dude! Oh yeah!

Right, so if you believed the junk that was the previous paragraph, then... ahem, nevermind. Now, unfortunately, that really was the good news. The bad news is this:

The thing you all know as "Empathy" is nothing but a joke. (No, not an illusion, but a joke.) Oh yes, a joke. A big, funny joke that's played on you by the English language and the omnipotent Power that overlooks our lives. An April Fool's joke that never ends.

A joke, I say. But what does the dictionary say?

em·pa·thy /ˈɛmpəθi/ [em-puh-thee] –noun

1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.

I'm referring to the first usage of "Empathy": the thing every single one of you have claimed to have felt for another.

"I understand how you feel."

A simple phrase that brings so much warmth and conveys so much emotional support. A single phrase that builds an invisible bridge of understanding between two, unqiue individuals, that builds friendship and trust and a common interest in a subject or thought. A phrase that invokes a sacred feeling of being two, yet together. A bonding.

How is this possible? You know it yourself. You've gone through it yourself. When you're at your most down, your most terrible state, a part of you just wants to curl up and die. Another part of you wants to hurt anyone who dares come near you. And a small part, a tiny part, an insignificant part of you calls out for someone to come to you, and comfort you, and take this pain away, or at least share in your pain.

Please don't mistake what I'm trying to describe as "Sympathy". There is nothing a person could want less than sympathy when he or she is feeling terrible. I don't need your pity when I'm feeling down. I need your empathy. I need someone to be there for me, to do something I cannot describe in words, but something all the same. Even if there is nothing anyone can do, I still would want someone to be with me. Even if I rage and yell and shout and say I want to be alone, a small part of me still cries out in loneliness.

A man cannot survive as an island, after all, or you cease to be human in any emotional sense of the word. That's humanity for you; at its lowest point, a person would still want to make others worry, to make them accompany them, until the trauma is forgotten, or "put behind" or "gotten over" or whatever you people call it.

Yet why do I say that this "Empathy", which humans all have in one form or another, is nothing but a joke? Well, the answer is simple. Isn't it funny, let me ask you, if you're "empathizing" with someone, and that person believes you are "empathizing" with him, yet in fact, you are not?

Let me illustrate you an example. A classic one.

You are a normal, average person. You are walking on the road, an empty road, when you come across a young girl, sitting on the curbwalk, crying like the world was ending. Being the good samaritan you are, you walk over and ask what happened. The girl lifts her bloody, wounded face and tells you, "I was assaulted."

Now, at this point, if I were to ask your reaction, each of you would give me a different one. Outrage, horror, alarm, shock. Whichever reaction you get, however, I'm sure each of you would try to comfort the girl. To provide her the empathy that you instinctively know she needs. How would you empathise? You don't even know what she went through. Was it an animal? Was it a killer? Where were her parents? Were they killed before her eyes? How would you empathise?

Alright, let's move to a different scenario. You are a police officer (whether you like it or not), and suddenly, in bursts this good citizen, a girl with her face scratched bloody cradled in his arms. She is settled onto a chair, and you gaze concernedly at the person who brought her in, whose face is a mixture of outrage, horror, alarm and shock. You put in an emergency call for medical help. Then you compose yourself and ask the girl to explain, in as much detail as possible, what happened. The girl describes a harrowing account of a torturous day spent in the company of a crazed serial killer who mangled her parents' bodies and raped her.

Now, I'm going to be a little insensitive here, if you're easily disturbed, don't read this paragraph. But I know you will anyway. Some of you have been raped. Some of you have had your parents killed before your eyes by a crazed serial killer. Very few of you had both happen to you. What are you going to do if you only had either one of the two, or neither, experiences? Can you truly, at this point in time, kneel down beside the girl, hug her tight and whisper, "I understand how you feel."? Can you truly understand how she feels? Even if you had both trauma happen to you, in the exact circumstances as the girl did, could you say that phrase with absolute confidence? Even twins react differently to the same circumstances; you, who are not a twin to the girl, can you really understand her feelings and thoughts at that point in time?

Alright, let's not speculate on something so theoretical. Let's look at something closer to all our hearts. You've had friends, haven't you, who have cried? You've had friends, haven't you, who told you some of their problems? From something as simple as what to wear when returning to school to collect results to something as big as having a cold war for years with siblings... I myself have confided in many people on my own problems, either seeking a solution or just a ear to talk to. I myself have fretted and worried and discussed other people's problems with them and other people, and have, sometimes, come up with some kind of solution.

Yet, each time I hear someone tell me, "I understand how you feel," I cannot help but smile sadly. Each time I myself tells another person, "I understand how you feel," I cannot help but grit my teeth and sigh at my own hypocrisy. Do I really understand? How can I understand?

To quote a book,

Have you ever had a moment when you sat at the deathbed of a close friend who is suffering, and thought to yourself, "Oh, gods, I cannot imagine the kind of pain he feels."? After all, pain is not the same as pain-behavior, and the peculiar awfulness of pain - what it's like - is never known except by feeling it.


I believe in the truth of an idiom, "Empathy is a two-way street". It is useless to empathise with someone who doesn't reciprocate. I can no more empathise with you any more than a rock can if you're holding me down and cutting my face. There's no way I can cry and say, "I'm so sad, I feel your pain, I understand your need to eat my flesh so that you can live on."

If you don't trust me on this one, you can go ask Hannibal Lector what he felt when his sister was killed like cattle to be eaten.

Yet at this point in time, I pose a question; if empathy is a two-way street... how can we know where each end of the street connects? Can you imagine an instance when two grieving women are hugging each other, believing they are empathizing with each other's loss of life-mate... but one of whom is a lesbian? Can you imagine what is going through both women's minds, believing they "truly understand each other", when the truth doesn't even come close?

Has it ever occured to you, that the same may be for you when you were comforting a friend, or being comforted?

Its a joke isn't it? I'm sure you giggled a little at the image of the two women. You find it funny too, don't you?

What's the point of this whole post?

The point is that it is useless to empathise, to even try. Because there is, theoretically, zero chance of truly understanding what another person is feeling. Even if we put theory aside, its still a joke.

Humans, however, are very unique creatures. We are creatures of hope, yet there is no such thing as "hope" in the Universe, only facts, circumstances and results. We are social creatures, yet empathy is a joke that is being played on us. We are alive, but we live as though we were dead.

Its pointless to worry about empathy, because there is no way you can run away from it. When the next person comes to me with their problems, I'm still going to hear them through, and then empathise, and if I can, I want to tell them, "I understand how you feel." I want to, because empathy is a two-way street, and I need the empathy that I am giving as much as I am receiving.

Do I really understand? Chances are, no, but I still want to understand, and I still will try, even if its useless to even try.

Do you understand what I am saying? Do you REALLY understand?

Good night, and until next week!

P.S. the weekly posts only apply after my first two-week confinement!

P.P.S. if you really believed the P.S., then you now have my permission to cut your wrists and emo.

Looking to the future~
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