Empathy is perhaps one of God's greatest gifts. "Empathy" is defined by Merriam-Webster (MW) as "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner." Or as Dr. Bruné Brown defines it, "me too." I love how MW defines it as "the action." It's not a feeling, or belief, rather something that takes hold of us in an activity or response. But Brown's brief definition captures it well. It is discovering a connection way beyond sympathy or belief. It is experiential and lived.
As I continue to understand empathy and the beauty of its meaning in my life, I realize that it is not something that just happens. We don't merely "happen to have empathy." It takes discovery, communication, and relationship. An effort which allows us to get to the point of Brown's "me too." Empathy comes from an education of sorts. We can't have empathy with a person until we have learned about them first. Then understand how it agrees with what we know about ourself. We have something to learn from every person we meet, and empathy allows for a more profound human kinship.
When we've built an empathetic understanding and relationship with people who may be different than we are—be it gender, ethnicity, race, socio-economic or political position, etc.—we connect on a more human level. A level that can overcome differences. And the "me too" becomes a bridge. It allows a relationship to move to a different place. When we experience an empathetic impact, it can tighten a bond or cause a disturbance. Sometimes both.
The disturbance received from empathy is interesting. What do we do when we newly discover a sameness, or "me too" with someone vastly different?
This brings us to the other side of empathy. The place where we must turn any new-found understanding, compassion, opinion, or position, and place it between us and our own mirror. Does this mirror-view, through the lens of empathy, bring about any change to myself? Does it cause me to evaluate my opinions and beliefs? Perhaps not to change them, but realize them differently, or reprioritize them a bit?
When I consider Jesus, he physically experienced a cosmic empathy as God becoming man. As a man, He could understand our ways and means, our fears, pains, joys, and laughters. But He knew there was a grand meaning to His cosmic empathetic experience. And as a result, he said things like "Forgive them for they don't know what they do.", and things about loving everyone—everyone, and not throwing stones at people. He even said we would do better things than He did. And then He died on our behalf.
So if our community or relationships bring us to the point of empathy with another person, let's press pause and let it disturb us a bit. Because there is more than "me too," there is also a "so now what?"