In a world where people are so easily offended, it is hard to find a word that can be used without offending someone in some way. One such word is empathy. The definition of empathy, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “the action or capacity of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings .” It sounds like an amazing quality for any person to have but when you think about it more deeply, there are many reasons why nobody wants this trait.
In order for somebody else to feel your pain or sorrow from afar, they must take the time out of their day and place themselves in your shoes. Empathy takes work on both ends which means that there will be a lot of wasted time from both parties. In today’s world where there is so much going on and so many social activities, it would be nearly impossible to have enough energy to participate in another person’s suffering.
Empathy also has a dark side which few people realize. If somebody truly wanted to see your suffering they would want you to feel the pain of what happened as if it were happening directly to them. This means that not only are they wasting their own time thinking of how bad you feel but now they are spending theirs imagining themselves in your very position with no way of focusing on anything else until this moment of empathy is over.
When this happens, life goes on for the empathize, leaving nothing but the bad taste of sadness behind. The best thing about being an empathizer is assuming someone else’s pain. It not only saves you time, but it also gives you a sense of satisfaction that no other person can have.
However, if this empathy were to wear off then there would be nothing left for anybody unless you were willing to take the time out of your own day to experience somebody else’s feelings again.
This may seem fun at first but after a while, it becomes just another chore like doing homework or taking the dog for a walk. If people didn’t mind seeing others suffer and could do so without any effort themselves, nobody would stop them because they wouldn’t care either way if they did.
The idea of empathy is great in the sense that it keeps people from hurting each other and makes life more tolerable, but when you really think about it, nobody wants to put effort into saving somebody else’s feelings. It would be a waste of time for everybody involved which leads me to conclude that there is no real meaning behind empathy.
Certainly today we are faced with crystal individuals, who tend to take offense very easily due to a self-esteem and fragile character ... Empathy plays a very important role in any relationship, since it allows us to put ourselves in the place of the other emotionally activating the cordiality and giving them the treatment that we would like to receive if we were going through a similar situation ... Happy weekend