Empathy: The Gift that Brings Love Down to Earth

The idea of unconditional love without embodied empathy can sound like a fanciful, romantic abstraction.

How unrealistic is it to love those who hurt us, wish us ill, misunderstand us and mock us behind our backs, or — if they have at least a modicum of mercy — simply ignore us?

How demanding it might seem to look kindly on those who speak and act in ways we can’t even fathom?

Many people have too much going on in their own lives to wonder why others behave the way they do. It’s less taxing, emotionally and mentally, to compartmentalise their actions — swiftly condemning and waving them off.

This is completely understandable, but it’s also a source of great grief for us, because we don’t let ourselves fully empathise with the other person as if they were just as human as we are. This false sense of separation closes our hearts to humanity, feeding the critical, judging mind instead.

Our understanding might stretch as far as those who love us back, agree with us, share the same values or background. Beyond that, all other souls may remain strangers, and some part of us may always remain unhealed as a result. Differences such as race, culture and gender can’t be celebrated as diverse, shimmering facets of a united human experience, unless we widen our hearts to include them.

Empathy asks us to dwell inside another’s story, their history, their suffering — even for a moment. It doesn’t necessarily ask for solutions or advice, but just to… be there. Once we feel another human being’s anguish seep into our very bones, their unspoken wounds coming alive in our very flesh, we realise the depth of our oneness with them.

Once this level of connection is forged, dismissing or trivialising their pain becomes unthinkably cruel. A subtler, more surprising transformation happens too: we begin seeing the hidden patterns of wounding that cause people to behave in ways we couldn’t even conceive before.

We don’t have to agree with poor behaviour, or accept abuse, but on some level we humble ourselves to the possibility that it could have been us had the circumstances been different.

Offering someone the small kindness of empathy doesn’t mean we let ourselves be overwhelmed and drown in their trauma either. It’s purely the act of a heart opening beyond all limitations. As we expand our innate capacity to love, what started as a gift we gave to others in fact ends up being our highest blessing.

Kiruthika Rajeswaran