Empathise!
When I first heard this term from a friend of mine, I didn't know its meaning (yeah now I realise why he is an MBA from IIM and I am not). It is one of the few terms which I cared to look up in the dictionary, and since then it has become one of my best friends (the word, not the dictionary).
Some definitions that I found on the net:
Princeton - be understanding of
Wikipedia - capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion
PublicBookShelf - The ability and capacity to fully understand and experience another's thoughts, circumstances and/or feelings
But what definition I apply to it is - Putting yourself in someone else's shoes
As i mentioned above, its one of the best things that ever happened to me, it has helped me realise that things are not always how they seem to you, there is always another side of the story that you ought to listen to. There are inferences that we all make looking at another person's behaviour, but these are based on what knowledge of the situation we posess and our own views and tendencies for that particular situation. Hardly do we consider what frame of mind is the other person in, what kind of background to the situation has led him to such a behaviour.
Its a completely different world for me as soon as I empathise. And I have always realised one thing, often my first thoughts towards an event's occurance have been wrong. And this I know because I always evaluate why I thought what I thought and what should I have thought after empathising. So before we take any actions based on our thoughts, its very very necessary to empathise.
Human wants are endless, and ends to achieve them are scarce. Our entire species have self-invited themselves to the boxing ring, forever fighting with other species of the same race for a common goal, without realising that it would be much easier to unite against a common enemy and jointly share the rewards. This is easier said than done, but the first step towards harmony is to Empathise.
I am sure that if I start giving practical examples to my claims above, it will use up a lot of webspace, but my theoretical comments upstairs should be enough to drive in my point.
So encourage everyone to Empathise and if it helps to change your attitude and improve your relationships with people you did not understand before, do make every effort to spread the message around.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteYou have presented a very noble thought. I fully agree with you that we generally ignore the emotions of the other person before making any comment. We must first learn to put our feets in others' shoes. I do it very rarely...which implies its frequency is very less. So this means purple colour has faded away...:) hope u got this joke
"Our entire species have self-invited themselves to the boxing ring, forever fighting with other species of the same race for a common goal, without realising that it would be much easier to unite against a common enemy and jointly share the rewards. This is easier said than done, but the first step towards harmony is to Empathise." ... too good!
ReplyDeleteSeriously Mr. Gentle Giant...U have simply awesome writing skills..wud urge u to write a small book, if not a novel
ReplyDelete