Sympathy vs. Empathy

One of the most relaxing things for me to do is to sit and decorate cookies, late at night, when all the household is sleeping. I plug in my phone and listen to the Mormon Channel. Usually to an episode of "Enduring it Well" or "Conversations". This is an indulgence that doesn't happen very often, but last week it did. I was decorating a cookie for each of the Primary Children for Easter.  I was listening to this. 

     As I was listening to the Stake President describing what he went through in Joplin, Missouri with the horrible devastating tornado, something he said made me really stop and think. I mean, like, a "stop-squeezing-royal-icing-for-a-minute-and-rewind-and-listen-to-it-again" think.  He was saying how it was comforting to have others around you who had gone through the same thing. I know, it is not new news at all, but the way he expressed it made me really think.

     (Here is the essence of it in my own words, not his...) He was saying how there were so many volunteers that came into the town to help after the devastation, and that while he deeply appreciated all that the people did to help out their brothers and sisters in need, there was a deeper emotional connection and empathy among those who went through the tornado with them, those who lost their homes and every earthly possession, as he did. Even though people sacrificed their time and their money and gave forth great efforts to assist those in need, it was the other people who could truly "get it" and have real empathy. He teared up as he spoke about it.

     Empathy is not a new word to me, I have contemplated the difference between empathy and sympathy many times before. I have even prayed for the ability to feel more sympathy towards certain other humans in my life and what they may be going through. But, I am not sure that I would exactly pray for more empathy, because by definition, it would almost seem to me like I was praying to go through trials, just so I could relate better to others going through them.

   I honestly feel like I have had enough of it. I know, I am beginning to sound arrogant about it, but honestly, I have had so many physical and emotional things happen to me, that I feel as if I could already have a certain amount of true empathy for various situations or scenarios.

    For example: emotionally: I have moved around a lot.  I have lost friends over small to large reasons. I have had my heart severely broken.  I have been teased relentlessly over things I had no control over.  I even had my personal diary stolen in High School and leaked to less-than-savory-characters to read my innermost thoughts.  I have been a member of a large family and received much teasing pertaining to that matter.  I have had to endure living in a country where I couldn't understand the language (6 months of pure frustration).  I have been on the causing end of a car-accident that injured another person.  I have been rejected, dejected, and depressed. I have lived through specific death threats of my family. I have been persecuted for my religion and beliefs. I have had to hand over my infant into the arms of an anesthesiologist who I knew was taking him to a table where his chest would be cut open and his heart surgically repaired, with the inherent knowledge and deep fear that there was a chance I could possible never see him alive again.  I have had to watch my own children in their struggles, with speech deficits that are still ongoing, with friends who are mean or non-including, with anger, with dishonesty and it's painful consequences.  I have seen my husband desperately searching for employment as he had the weight of the world (a spouse and three little mouths) to take care of. On the flip side,  I have also felt the indescribable emotional joy of having a happy marriage, and  healthy and smart and fun children, of being a missionary in the Lord's army and spreading the good word abroad in the hearts of men.

  Physically: I have been through some experiences that I would never "ask" for, but have happened to me nonetheless. I suffered with horribly high fevers as a child, like 106 with accompanying febrile-seizures. (Some medical experts told my parents those high fevers likely led to my weak enamel which has blessed me with a lifetime of dental visits for more fillings than a donut-shop and more root-canals than any young woman should have.) I was afflicted with a severe case of chicken-pox, had my tonsils removed, and subsequently my appendix removed all during the second grade.  I developed a sudden and life-threatening allergy to horses when I was only 11 years old which completely derailed all my childhood dreams of becoming a rodeo star. I then got asthma and other allergies which became increasingly worse as an adolescent. I remember laying my head on my mother's lap as I struggled to breath, silently wishing that I could just die so that it would be over quick. What terror! In college, I had a bike accident, a car accident, and a racquetball accident (where I lost several teeth). I got a bad knee from a basketball injury that causes me pain on and off to this day.  I have been (okun-medicated. I have "bled out" after delivery and felt myself 'floating away out of my body'.  I have had a hysterectomy. I have fallen on ice and broken my elbow (no fun, especially when it was in front of my sweet son and he had to watch me in pain). Etc., Etc.

    There are some things that I have so far only experienced through others, for which I try to have as much sympathy as possible. Things such as: betrayal and infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, anorexia and other eating disorders, disability, broken families, divorce, cancer and other serious medical afflictions, turning one's back on the Church and the teachings thereof.  All horribly sad things. Some preventable, some not.
 
  I would never pray for more empathy for any of those things, only for more sympathy. I often do find it strange, though, as I am going through some of my trials (physical or emotional) and I begin to look heavenward and ask that ever-mortal question of "why".... I am almost always stopped in my very questioning, with the soul-piercing response of "it will be for your good" or "it will help you to have more empathy towards others someday". This thought alone, while not exactly an answer like I would like to have, has sufficed me and pacified me with a sort of peace that I cannot describe. I am able to pick up the pieces, and move forward.

   No, it is not any sort of a new revelation at all, the idea of empathy, just one that I am apparently needing to be reminded of again and again. And as I listened to that talk, these thoughts overcame my heart and mind. The very thought of how comforting it is and has been to me in my life and in my trials to have others around me who have indeed "been through the same thing" before, who really do know if not exactly, then at least very closely, what I am feeling or going through.  If I pull back the lens and look at it in a bigger sense, it is no wonder to me why my close friends and my siblings and my extended family are so treasured. Surely, it is because we have been through so many things together. It actually gives some definition to the over-used and sometimes comical saying: "You just had to be there!"

     And when I am on my knees and pleading for love and understanding and peace, I am always reminded in the deepest recesses of my aching heart, of one who actually WAS there, who actually WENT THROUGH WHAT I DID, who actually FELT MY EXACT SAME PAIN...
   my older brother, my Lord and Savior, even Jesus the Christ.

For that all-powerful fount of complete and pure EMPATHY, I am forever grateful.