Is Empathy enough?

Every infant is born with an innate ability to empathize. Have you ever walked into a kindergarten class full of crying kids? The moment a child sees tears, it understands that the other is sad and chimes in to cry along. Remember how even as adults we tear up during an emotional scene in a movie or even in a funeral of some second cousin’s third uncle, though we’ve never met the person when they were alive?

Empathy- has been primordially ingrained in our psyche.

Science points towards oxytocin- a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland as the reason behind empathy. Philosophy relates it to mind reading and psychology relentlessly stresses it be one of the most important traits for better social bonding.

If every human is born with the ability to understand another’s emotions, feel another’s pain and comprehend another’s hurt, How are wars still raging on earth and cold blooded murders and rapes still taunting us every so often? Wouldn’t we all stop doing or even thinking of harm, if we had the ability to put ourselves in another’s shoes?

I remember entering my college corridor a few years ago. Except for the gaudy pink bike by the parking lot, everything seemed normal. The hoots, bickering, loud laughter, muffled whispers of the almost-adults, filled the air.

“Hey D….didn’t you hear about Jay yet?” one of my friends gabbed. The tone of her voice suggested it wasn’t happy news.

I shook my head and she continued, “She killed herself…….”

“She….WHAT?” it didn’t make sense.

Jay was my best friend, I’d known her since we were on pigtails, we’d shared far too many lunch hours and after school chats together to be jabbed even as “The Siamese twins”.

“Depression….they say….” The friend added on.

This must be a lie, some mean prank Jay was pulling on me I told myself, as I frantically called her phone. It rang long and no one answered my call. I called again, and again.

“I’m sorry for your loss…” a passerby murmured.

Jay was one of those talent-laden girls. She captained the volleyball team, was the college band’s lead singer and her portraits would bring life even to inanimate objects.

Depression was for the sad and gloomy, not for Jay. Never.

She had had her own share of misfortunes, her sister passing away a few months ago, the recent break up, arrears in math and most of all her overweight paired with an inferiority complex. We’d usually talk, sort and cry those issues away But this, this was uncalled for.

“I’m sorry D….Jay is really gone….”

It all seemed so surreal.

“Jay……Please pick my call…..Please…Please…..” tears rained down on me.

Grief slowly started creeping in amidst the doubt as I thought about her parents, her shy little brother and even her pet labrador ‘tyson’ who’d never get to see those big dove eyes growing larger with each expression or feel that faint fruity smell of her favorite Giovanni perfume in her hugs.

After another 100 “Jay…..where are you?” texts and a hundred more unattended phone calls, It seemed like my friend and a group of sympathizing classmates that had surrounded me were right.

The distraught arrival of my parents and their rushed ushering me into the car, confirmed the inevitable.

“Jay was really gone…”

I couldn’t stop thinking how I didn’t catch any signs of depression in her, though we spent practically 12 hours a day together, sharing a desk in class or a table in the canteen or even the same dance floor for rehearsals till dusk.

None. Not a gloomy look in her eyes, a passing sad note during a conversation, sullen silence or a sudden whimper of pain.

Condolences and pitiful sighs had filled my day. I can’t remember anything about the funeral that evening as my heavy heart and eyes didn’t have enough strength to register anything yet. The sight of the rope hanging off her room’s ceiling fan with a hangman’s noose plagued my entrails.

“Jay..what’s with the blank texts after midnight….?”

“Nothing….I must’ve sent it by mistake….” She flashed a sheepish smile.

“Aren’t you gonna touch those fries…?”

“Nah…I don’t feel like it…”

“Well…don’t diet yourself to death….”, A sheepish smile.

“Why are your eyes so red?”

“oh that….I was up reading DB last night…..” , A sheepish smile again.

Only if I’d known behind those smiles was a sheep writhing in agony, waiting to slaughter itself.

“I thought I was her best friend ma, I knew her so well, understood her better than anyone else …….”, My mom nodded as I managed to mumble between my tears.

“why would she………..why would she?”

I just couldn’t bring myself to say ‘kill herself’.

The trauma crippled me for days. It felt like I lost a part of me. A loud, colorful, vibrant part of me. The numbing pain was watered with tears, growing more branches of distress, bearing flowers of the past memories, until my mom came to my room that night.

“Dhanea….I want to tell you something…” she whispered sensing I wasn’t asleep.

I was too reluctant to sit up as she switched the lights on.

“Come here….” She hugged me gently and stroked my hair as she went on.

“Jay was your best friend and I understand you are in pain…..”

“Hmmm…” tears welled with just the mention of her name.

“But I wish you’d been more compassionate….”

I didn’t understand.

Did my mom think I missed the signs of pain in my best friend? Or that I was too lousy a friend to care about Jay’s sorrows?

“Ma…..what are you talking about? I listened to her every time she cried, understood all her pains and always assured her things were going to be alright….” I back lashed, wriggling out of her arms.

“I understand you felt empathy… But I wish you were compassionate…”

Anger riveting over the pain. “I was compassionate…… I was always there for her, day or night…”

“I know……You were empathetic But were you compassionate?” she repeated.

I was in no mood for wordplay.

“What’s the difference?”

“You listened to her sad stories, understood her sorrow, spoke to her when she wasn’t fine, but did you DO anything to alleviate her struggle?”

I was really lost now.

“You felt her pain with her and not for her…”

My 23 year old brain wasn’t yet capable of comprehending what my mother was trying to prove.

“Empathy is just becoming one with the sufferer and feeling what they feel, but Compassion doesn’t stop there. It is feeling their pain yet knowing your part is to find ways to rid them of it….”

My mom noticed the confusion in me,

“Let’s say you saw a bleeding puppy on the road….moaning and whimpering in pain…. Would you cry with it or take it to the nearest vet?”

I looked at my eager mother, waiting for her heavy wisdom to sink in.

I repeated her question in my head. And this time it made perfect sense.

“Would you cry with it or take it to the nearest vet?”

Instead of listening to her cry her heart out and ache with her, I should’ve taken Jay to her favorite comedian’s show, spent a few hours improving her math, accompanied her to the gym and vetoed on her recent diet plan.

I should’ve been COMPASSIONATE. I should have felt FOR her not WITH her.

It took me years to mourn my best friend’s loss but the gyaan the loss taught, stuck with me ever since.

When you see a being (human, animal or even a plant) in pain, show COMPASSION, not just empathy. Compassion tries to separate the self from the sufferer and their suffering, thus letting us find a logical and rational solution to the other’s problem. Compassion is nothing but Empathy with self-awareness and action.

Buddha, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Mala Yusufzai, Abraham Lincoln were all people who didn’t just stop with feeling the pain of others, but went many steps further to save them from further torment.

Researches prove that empathy activates the insula (linked to emotion and self-awareness) and anterior cingulate cortex (linked to consciousness and pain registering). While compassion, a more cognitive response stimulates the medial orbitofrontal cortex (connected to learning) and the ventral striatum (connected to the reward in decision making).

Empathy drains the bearer emotionally, while karuna (compassion) empowers them to act on the issue at hand.

In buddha’s words, “If a man going down into a river, swollen and swiftly flowing, is carried away by the current — how can he help others cross?”

Take a moment. Think .

To fill this world with peace, to wipe out all pain and suffering, ‘Is empathy enough?’