Every few weeks, my kids come home from school to tell me about the virtue they’re discussing in their classrooms that month. They learn what it is, how to demonstrate it, how to recognize it in others, and, in our family’s case, how to point out to their parents when that virtue isn’t being demonstrated. I’ve personally been called out by my kids for not being cooperative enough, the character trait they learned about in August. This month, the word they’re learning is “empathy.” My kindergartner picked it up pretty quickly, but I and other adults in my life, personally and professionally, are finding the concept more difficult to fully grasp. We’ve asked each other: What does it mean? What does it look like? How does it feel? How should it feel? Can it be learned? Can you have too much of it?
Most psychologists believe empathy has three components: the affective response, or feeling what another person is feeling; the cognitive response, or understanding what another person is feeling, and the ability to separate oneself from the other person. In conversation, empathy is often interchanged with compassion, which comes from a Latin word meaning “to suffer with.” No wonder so many of my colleagues and friends in libraries, schools, and social service agencies talk about experiencing compassion fatigue. They’re literally sharing in the suffering of others, on top of any personal suffering they may be experiencing. But is it possible to experience and express empathy without burn out or isolation?
The research on this is complex. Some psychologists believe that compassion is a motivator, and when compassion is combined with all components of empathy, the result is action—action that benefits society and improves the well-being of others. That is, the ability to share in the suffering with others, to feel what others feel, to understand intellectually what others feel, and to see yourself as separate from the person who is suffering is the combination that leads us to being with and caring for our community while still caring for ourselves.
In 2025, I will strive to improve my own empathetic responses and to strengthen my ability to empathize, starting with reading more fiction. Learning other people’s stories changes the way we think and improves our ability to empathize. My own opinions, beliefs, and perspectives have evolved over the years largely due to witnessing, hearing, and reading about others’ stories and experiences, even those of fictional characters. (Here is your plug to get that library card.)
I will also seek out ways to share spaces with more people, to hear their stories first hand and to share my own.
I’ll seek ways to enable my community to do that as well at the Galesburg Public Library. Social psychologist Gordon Allport’s contact theory states that interpersonal contact can improve empathy and reduce prejudice, as long as the following conditions are met:
1. Members of the group share equal status,
2. Members of the group share common goals,
3. Members of the group are cooperating or working together to achieve their goals, and
4. Contact among members of the group is supported by authority figures
When considering these conditions, I can envision a classroom, a sports team, a military unit, a volunteer group, a girl scout troop, or even a group of protesters finding themselves sharing a space and a goal and building empathy for one another while doing so. I hope to spend this year seeking ways to participate in groups, sharing a common goal and working together to achieve that goal, and fostering spaces that invite people to work together, thus providing a pathway toward a more empathetic community.
While I work toward building my own empathy, along with compassion, I have a great team of elementary school students at home who are empathy experts and are sure to keep me on track.
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