Wellness Calendar: Sunday 23 June

The responsibility of empaths

An active empath is someone who strives to understand what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. No one will ever know exactly what it’s like to be someone else, but people with empathy are open and available to giving it a go.

Empathy is not to be confused with sympathy (i.e., pity and sorrow) or compassion (suffering together). These two other qualities are useful tools to have in your locker, but will only get you so far as a facilitator. This is because sympathy and compassion are all about you and your own feelings. Empathy is not about you: it’s about the other person. It’s about devoting your focus and senses to the pursuit of working out what’s going on for the other person, with the aim of helping them.

Being empathetic is an incredibly valuable asset for the well-being of our fellow citizens. (In a parallel universe it would be the most sought-after and prized attribute of all.)

This is one of the main pillars of how we as humans can help other humans out of distress. You can evidence-base all sorts of new-fangled approaches to wellness, but you don’t need to prove the effectiveness of empathy. It. Is. Priceless.

Yet many natural empaths do not use this highly potent quality, for all sorts of reasons, and we would be the last people to ever judge them for that. But – or rather and – we would still like to playfully engage in a conversation with you, to see if you may consider using this attribute as a force for good at some point in your life.

In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote an article called The Responsibility of Intellectuals, in which he called for people of intelligence to stand up to the lies that were being peddled by the American government during the Vietnam war and speak up for the truth. In this article he acknowledged that not everyone possesses the ability to distinguish truth from falsehoods, with many people happy to accept and digest whatever information is placed before them, so long as it comes from a place of authority.

In similar fashion, we have written an imaginary article called The Responsibility of Empaths, where we argue the case for people taking the well-being of their own communities into their own hands, because if they wait for the authorities to do so they’ll grow old waiting.

If you are interested in this idea, we have a free ‘Wellness Facilitation Handbook’ available on our Self Detective website, which includes this very entry.

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