Sympathy and empathy
By Taru Bahl

SYMPATHY is not just walking up to someone and just saying, "I am sorry for you". The words have to be accompanied by concern, compassion, understanding and love to qualify as true and genuine sympathy. When a friend’s father after a prolonged ailment passes away and one meets her after a couple of months in the market and hugs her, and tells her how awful one felt and how one’s heart went out to her just thinking about what she must have gone through, the entire exercise may ring hollow. If she then just walks away, it may not come as a surprise. Had the latter been really sympathetic, she would have reached out to her friend the moment she heard of her father’s illness. By expressing quiet solidarity, offering help and just being there, she would have communicated her feelings without having to resort to bombastic words and flamboyant gestures. If she had shared her friend’s sense of loss, confusion and pain, she would have gone a step further and expressed empathy.

Today, people are touchy about their feelings. They guard their privacy fiercely and feel they can ‘handle it all’. They may or may not want to share their bad moments and painful thoughts with even those they are close to. This could put others on guard. There is a risk that their genuine concern may be misconstrued as pretentious lip service.

Sympathy is part of an attitude which makes one give the other person one’s entire attention and see things from the other’s point of view. Usually when this happens, the other person acknowledges it, is grateful for it and values you all the more. According to Stephen Covey, a modern-day management guru, "This takes courage, patience and inner sources of security. It means being open to learning and change. It means moving into the minds and hearts of others to see the world as they see it. It does not mean that you feel exactly what they feel or go through the same degree of pain and suffering. But by sympathising you tell them that you understand and care. Nothing changes between us." The form of sympathy has to be modified to suit the other person’s needs. There are those who need bear hugs and big words to be comforted, whereas there are people who like the reassuring solid presence of a friend who may lapse into long spells of silence.

There is this story about a Hindu priest who lived across the street from a prostitute. Each day as he proceeded for prayers and meditation he saw men moving in and out of her house. He was filled with disgust and loathing just imaging what went on within those four walls. He held her responsible for polluting the neighbourhood. He publicly cursed his luck for having the misfortune of seeing her so often and being in such proximity with one who led a dishonourable life. Each day the prostitute saw the priest go about his spiritual practices. She derived tremendous succour from the meditative chanting, incense-filled air

and spartan life which he led, devoted to his religion and beliefs. She was filled with remorse at her existence which was doomed to a lifetime of misery. She felt hurt when the priest cursed her under his breath or when he said slanderous things about her, but she never held it against him. She studiously stayed out of his way, not wanting to ‘pollute’ his noble work. She sat behind a curtain and listened to the daily aarti.

The priest and the prostitute died on the same day and stood before God together. Much to his astonishment, the priest was condemned for his wickedness. Protesting, he said, "But my life has been one of purity. I have spent my days in prayer and meditation." God replied, "Yes, but while your

body was engaged in holy acts your heart was consumed by vicious judgements and your soul was ravaged by lustful imagination." The prostitute, on the other hand, was commended for her purity. Surprised, she said, "I do not understand. All my life I have sold my body to any man who paid the price for it." God said, "Your life’s circumstances placed you in a whore house. You were born there and it was beyond your strength to escape, but while your body was performing unworthy acts, your heart was always pure

and forever fixed on contemplating the purity of the holy man’s prayers and meditation."

The priest displayed unsympathetic behaviour and the prostitute was not only sympathetic towards his plight, never forgetting that he was forced to share the same neighbourhood as her but she was also empathetic about it. So while sympathy is ‘understanding how the other person feels’, empathy is ‘feeling how the other person feels.’

People with empathy have the ability to put themselves in others’ position and pose a question to themselves, "How would I feel if someone were to treat me this way?" The dictionary defines sympathy as "harmony of or agreement in feeling as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another. It is a quality of mutual relations between people or things whereby whatever affects one also affects the other. It combines the virtues of compassion and commiseration." Empathy is defined as "intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts or attitudes of another person."

There are professions like police and medicine which thrive on brute force and clinical care. But that doesn’t mean that policemen can’t be sympathetic towards criminals. They can care for victims of crime, handle domestic disputes, deal with the mentally disturbed, rehabilitate them and help them fight for justice. Haven’t we seen doctors and nurses talking gently with terminally ill patients, being cheerful in the general wards, speaking tenderly with worried relatives, explaining to them in simple terms the condition of their patient? This is nothing but sympathy and empathy at its very best. The fact that not all cops and doctors are as caring and humane points to the fact that sympathy cannot be bought or made obligatory. It has to come from within. Sympathy need not interfere with one’s duty. Many of us refrain from getting ‘sentimental’, mistakenly thinking it would be incorrect or give out wrong signals. A policeman or a judge sentencing a murderer, who is also the sole bread-winner of his family, to life imprisonment does not have to tamper with the laws to express his sympathy. He can do so by arranging welfare and support for the family. Ditto for those who have contracted the AIDS virus, or have ruined their mental and physical health due to drug and alcohol abuse, or who, because of violent and unreasonable behaviour, are leading a lonely life.

To be sympathetic is in itself a great quality. It means to stop thinking of one’s own selfish interests and look at the other person in totality, feeling and experiencing the same emotions he is going through. If you look at this carefully you will realise that this is rather passive. Depending on how intensely we feel for the other person we can move into the second gear of sympathy, the action mode. Seeing a tragic picture of a starving child and shedding a few tears, feeling sorry for her plight, is sympathy but offering to donate a token amount or volunteering to spend a few hours a week in an orphanage is active sympathy. When Kiran Bedi started yoga and counselling in Tihar Jail, she converted her sympathy into action and made a positive difference to the lives of those who were condemned and doomed.

Today, organisations too acknowledge the fact that ‘people matter’. That sympathy and caring do not need psychological sophistication. It is a simple human emotion which must be exercised to win people, to earn long-term commitment and loyalty. Finally, it has to stem from a spontaneous, honest and humane feeling. It cannot be a mandatory, passive exercise.