Is the grass really ‘greener’ on the other side?
Noah Hapke, a Global Citizen Year Fellow, talks about what we can all learn from practicing a little empathy.
People always say that “the grass is greener on the other side” or that “it’s greener where you water it.” But is it really? Do we just say so because we are unhappy with our own situation?
Understanding empathy
When I was five, my mom and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. A year before that, my sister, Sarah, had passed away in a car crash. Looking back, I didn’t understand that Sarah was not coming back from Heaven. As my mom and I were walking that day, we came across a bee lying on the sidewalk, asleep. “Its heart just got tired and stopped,” my mom explained. And again, my five-year-old brain could not grasp the concept of a heart that didn’t work. My mom taught me many years later that I did not need to have lost my sister to empathize with this bee. It is just part of being a human; to understand and to feel another person’s pain, with or without an understanding of where that pain comes from.
Put yourself in someone else’s shoes
We have all heard this quote. One day I emailed an old teacher of mine with a simple ‘hello’ and a few sentences to ask how she was. When my teacher responded, she began her email with “I’ve had a super emotional day.” Initially, I wanted to roll my eyes at this; no one can have that bad of a day. But as I came to realize, my teacher, my peer and friend, had opened up to me and gave me the opportunity to see things from her perspective. This was an opportunity for me see things from a different perspective. I did not have to be standing right beside her, nor did I have to see her tears in person, to understand.
I understood.
I understood because empathizing isn’t about having a personal connection to a story; it’s about having a deeper understanding of the person telling the story.
It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and embodying how she must be feeling; the emotions, the tears and the pain. All of the human emotions that we, as a species, have the innate capability of understanding.
Empathy is the action of understanding and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another without having the feelings, thoughts, or experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Think beyond what matters to you
A lot of people refuse to acknowledge that they have the power to change their way of thinking — to open their minds up to new possibilities. The way to do this is to connect our reality to the idea of empathy. It’s true that people are selfish at times, for selfishness has its negatives as well as positives. But when we use both characteristics, the positives to influence others and the negatives to better ourselves, that’s how change happens. That’s how we see new possibilities; because we open ourselves to humility and vulnerability, and as a result, recognize our faults and how we can change. We can also see how others can improve and rather than criticizing them, we understand why these differences exist and how we can work together to make both sides of the fence greener.
We must understand before we can judge.
I believe looking at the little, fallen bee was my first real experience in practicing empathy. Whether I recognized it or not, I was looking at the situation through its eyes. I was listening to its story through my ears. I was feeling its struggle and ease through a new and different heart.
And that is what empathy is.
Empathy brings us together, whether we are standing side-by-side or oceans apart. It closes the gap between differences and reminds us all that we are the same: we are all human. We are all people with an untold story and unfamiliar, yet similar, cultures. We have families and loved ones, laughter and tears, stories and fables, new ones and old. We are all trying to share our lives with one another. All you have to do is be willing to understand. Open up your eyes, your ears, and your heart to the new story that is about to be. That is the first step, and it only gets easier from there. Open up the gate and say, “I have plenty of water to share.”
Bio: This post comes from Noah Hapke, a Global Citizen Year Fellow spending his bridge year before college in Ecuador. Global Citizen Yearis an award-winning, non-profit social enterprise on a mission to make it normal to choose a bridge year; an experience after high school that builds self-awareness, global skills, and grit — the foundations for success in college and beyond. This blog has been published as a part of the #StartEmpathy series, an ongoing campaign by Ashoka for the Think it Up! initiative.
