Empathy: Who Do We Include?

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge . . . is empathy, for it requires us to spend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.
Bill Bullard

One of the earliest lessons of my childhood was empathy. The word was not used, but the actions it encouraged were. Whether it was how we treated the dogs that were always a part of our family life, or elderly people in our community, or new people that we did not know, or individuals who were clearly struggling with some difficulty, or people who did not look like us, the message I recall learning was the same: think about how they must feel and act accordingly. Without knowing it, I was being taught to make space in my own heart for the experiences of other beings.

The requirement of considering how another being must feel in any situation landed deeply in me.  As a middle schooler, the Diary of Anne Frank introduced me to the Nazi holocaust that decimated the Jewish community, People of Color, those who were differently abled physically and mentally, and the LGBTQIA communities in German controlled parts of Europe. I couldn’t believe that human beings would do such things to other human beings, and so I would go to the library and check out another book about the Holocaust. And another. And another. And another. I became depressed with the overwhelm of it all. 

Empathy is really about who we are willing to let in–to our hearts, our minds, and especially our imaginations.  Imagination is one of the great human superpowers, and when coupled with another superpower, curiosity, we open wide the door of empathy. As soon as we do that, imagining what it must be like to be in another’s condition, we face this question: who shall we include? Why would we exclude this person, that group? Can I imagine what it must be like? 

People with a developed sense of empathy can be taken advantage of. It has become popular to demonize empathy for this very reason. Empathy makes us vulnerable to the experiences of other beings and calls on us to respond. That response may require us to step across some lines that we once thought were non-negotiable. Navigating those steps is a large part of how we grow and deepen as human, spiritual, beings.

The real question that empathy asks is this: who will we include in the abundance that we enjoy? Abundance of material goods. Abundance of understanding. Abundance of care. Abundance of joy. Abundance of welcome. Abundance of encouragement. Abundance of accountability. Abundance of anything and everything that we already find supporting our lives. As Unitarian Universalists, we have some guiding values as we seek to answer this question: justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, inclusion, generosity and love.

Who will we include in the abundance we enjoy?

~Bob Patrick