Several comments on yesterdays entry got me thinking, one in particular. Over at All Considering she asked...

Does the practice of judging others stem from lack of empathy? Or does lack of empathy come from the practice of judgment? Does one thing ever lead to another?

I’ve never been one who believed that one thing exists apart from anything else.

I long ago came to accept the interconnectedness of life. Judgment and empathy are forever linked, in as much as they are two sides of the same coin. Yet when empathy exists, the need to judge another withers and dies.

Is empathy then a concrete concept, or is it fluid and moving like the nature of love? Aren’t empathy and love connected as well? In order to empathize with others, aren’t we first required to have the capacity to love others? To at the very least see them first as human beings just like ourselves, worthy of love?

Follow up:

Many people consider themselves good people merely because they have the capacity to love another. Love in many respects is a selfish emotion, we rarely think of it as such, but the basis of love is generally how another person makes us feel. Love at its very essence is a choice. We choose those we will love, and those we will not.

Couldn’t many of us say we are seeking that... "someone with whom we can be wholly ourselves, foolish and intimate and off guard. I have such a longing for that."

What a beautiful sentiment, the very essence of love condensed in those simple words. Those words did not come from Hemingway, they didn’t come from Shakespeare, they came from Adolph Hitler regarding Geli Raubal, his niece. She died at the age of 23, driven to suicide by her uncle who loved her so.

Hitler could, and did love, but he had no empathy for those he crushed under his boot heel, including the very object of his affection. Hitler did not lack the capacity to love, what he lacked was the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, what he lacked was empathy.

I sometimes wonder if empathy is a dying art, for it is an art. It is setting yourself aside and for a moment becoming another person, trying to see the world through their eyes. To examining the thoughts, feelings, and experiences that create the person that stands before you today.

When we judge another, we are not only depriving them of their humanity, but depriving ourselves of humanity as well. It is easy to just see the action, and ignore the reaction. To see the anger and self-interest without seeing the pain it serves to cover. To see the differences and ignore the similarities.

We are, all of us, no matter how different we appear, more the same than we are different. We all hope, we all fear, we all love, we all suffer. Deep down, we all feel. Do we feel for only ourselves, or do we open our hearts and allow feelings for others to allow us to see the similarities we all share?

The real question is: Which is more important love for one another? Or empathy for one another?

PEACE