Empathy - It’s a central theme of this website, but I think it’s something that is often misunderstood. This animated short is pretty good at explaining the importance of empathy, and how it’s very different from sympathy…but I also have my reservations about its explanation.

It’s pretty great, but I have to disagree with one important point. Empathy isn’t about “knowing what it’s like” or “connecting with something inside yourself that knows that feeling”. Those things are important, and part of the process of empathy, but if it ends there it’s not empathy. In fact, if it ends there, it’s not helpful, but harmful.

Here’s why.

Fundamentally, you can never truly know what it’s like to be someone else. We can only try, and fail. Empathy is about trying to understand, and ultimately accepting that you cannot truly know what it’s like, and respecting the words of the person you’re empathizing with. If you make the dangerous claim that you know what it’s like to be someone else, you’re simplifying a lifetime of experience. It trivializes the experience, and dismisses the complexity of individuals, groups, context, culture, and history.

The mistaken perception of empathy is particularly dangerous when it leads to people speaking in place of others, consequently talking over the people whom they are supposedly speaking for. It can silence entire groups of people by stealing their space. In short, this kind of misdirected empathy is just appropriation.

So I would say that empathy is about finding common ground, but also recognizing and respecting the uniqueness of an individual. Without that respect – and acknowledgement of our own ignorance – you cannot truly be empathetic.