Connectedness II — Empathy

Your homework this week is to consider all the ways that we, as human beings (especially you, as a member of that group), are connected with each other.

As I thought about this question, I was drawn, not to the universal view, but to the more intimate and personal view. I thought first of getting together for family meals and how there are rituals around the different times and places we get together.

For my family, certain holidays were celebrated at different family members’ homes or at other specific venues. Can you recall yours for New Years Day, Easter (yes, my Christian upbringing), Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, or Christmas (or other seasonal holidays)?

I thought about the “ritual” food items we had for each of our family celebrations: champagne for New Years Eve, ham for Easter, hot dogs and hamburgers for the Fourth of July, Labor Day was an individual family event for us, Thanksgiving was always turkey, and for Christmas we had roast beef. And all the guests who traveled to the event would bring their own “special dish” to add to the meal.

So, we all got together at these times, and we ate exactly the same food every year, with the same people. So why didn’t we get bored with these rituals? Why did we look forward to getting together?

Because the real reason we get together over the table is to talk – to connect with each other, to hear our current stories. Eating just keeps our mouths busy for a while so we can listen.

Our joys, our pains, our struggles, our successes – this is what we shared around the table. We empathized with the pain and suffering of our friends and family and we shared in their happiness and joys. We are, after all, social animals. And our life is based on feelings, not on logic. Sympathy is to feel for someone in their suffering, but Empathy is “feeling with” others in both their happiness and sadness. This is why we get together with others; to feel with them.