And I Thought I Understood Empathy

"Define empathy," said the trainer in one of the recent trainings I was attending. The topic was 'Listening with emapthy.'

"Putting yourself in the other person's shoes" - pat came the reply from us participants - all matured, learned individuals who obviously knew the meaning of this simple word used in everyday lives.

"Excellent. So we all know what empathy is, right? So you, young man," - he pointed towards a participant - "please come here and put yourself in my shoes!"

"Huh? No, I am..." - the poor guy looked like someone had requested him to be a suicide bomber.

"No, please. I request you to come here and put yourself in my shoes." - the trainer had already taken off his shoes.

Not left with too much of a choice, the victim rose from his seat and walked towards the trainer. All eyes were on him - curious as to what is going on. So mister suicide bomber started taking off his own shoes so that he can put himself in the trainer's shoes - literally.

"So guys - what do you see he is doing?" the trainer threw a question at us.

"Taking off his shoes..." - we stated the obvious once again.

"Exactly. And that, dear friends, is empathy!" - the trainer smiled. "Take off your own shoes before you put yourself in someone else's shoes."

And that's when it all dawned upon me. To put myself in someone else's shoes effectively, I would first need to take off my own shoes. How many times do I do that? How many times do I keep MY shoes aside when I listen to people? My prejudices, judgements, perceptions - don't I have all that baggage with me when I talk to someone - more often than not? Yes, I do.

I could remember multiple conversations I had had with various people at different points in time - where I had already decided what the person wanted or was going to say - even before listening to him or her. So many instances where I had already arrived at the outcome of a discussion even before getting into it. And then I wondered - would things have taken a different course had I shown some empathy in these situations? Is it possible that things that did not work out would have been fine if I had just listened to the other person with a neutral state of mind? May be. May be I had not been able to solve some of those problems just because I was not emapthetic enough to listen and find out the root cause of the issue.

It's interesting how a new perspective to such simple things in life gives them a whole new meaning. I had always thought that I knew what empathy means. Guess I am beginning to understand it only now.