Sympathy, Empathy & Meme Talk
I remember when sympathy was seen as something worth offering. You certainly were expected to offer it to people when they lost a loved one, fell on hard times, lost a job, or were ill or in pain. After all if we needed a measure of how important sympathy once was we only have to look at the volume of sympathy cards in card shops – Hallmark certainly still has faith in its place in the world.
Full disclosure: I’ve never been very good at offering sympathy. Don’t get me wrong, I do feel sympathetic when I encounter people in any of the aforementioned scenarios, I’m not a psychopath (maybe), I just never feel comfortable actually sympathising with them verbally.
Funerals are the worst. I can never join the queue to shake hands with the bereaved and whisper some well-chosen words to show how much I feel their pain and wish them well. My late mother never failed to chastise me for my cowardice in these situations with a carefully placed, “Sure they didn’t even know you were there”. And that statement brought it home to me that it wasn’t enough to feel sympathetic, sympathy was performative in nature. You had to be seen to be sympathetic and if at all possible be heard bestowing that sympathy on the poor unfortunates.
That might explain my apprehension, I can’t help feeling the phrases we use to express our sympathy sound patronising in the hands, or more appropriately on the tongues, of sympathetic amateurs like me. It can even sound cold and have none of the touchy-feely benefits of its close relative – empathy.
Empathy of course is extremely “in” these days. Having an empathic understanding of the worlds ills is essential if you’re ever to be accepted into early 21st century society. Empathy takes sympathy and adds a good helping of actually sharing the feelings of the unfortunate individual. It turns the mostly self-focused sympathy (which reflects how you feel about the other persons bad experience), into a focus on the other person who is dealing with the negative effects. It requires one to be capable of experiencing the other persons emotions from their perspective and using that to be more supportive.
One of the many benefits to empathy is it allows the person being offered it to know you aren’t just feeling sorry for them, but actually sharing in their pain. It’s a deeper connection.
Where we run into problems with empathy is not when it comes to universally available experiences like grief, although even that can have elements that are rare if not unique; I’m thinking of death as a result of violent crime or the loss of a child. It’s where it’s simply not possible to share the experience because the emotion is unique to one gender or race.
In these situations it may be far safer and more appropriate I think, to fall back on the old staple, sympathy. Maybe that’s why you don’t see so many greeting cards that exclaim “I feel your pain!”.
Having said that what you see way too much of these days are memes wrapped in saccharine images with equally over sweetened “advice” –Whenever grief tries to steal the beauty of your memories, just remember, love never dies – being one of my pet hates.
These soundbites of deep wisdom (sarcasm – in case you’re too well rounded to recognise so low a mode of delivery) are absolutely everywhere. I’d venture to say they’re 80% or more of the non-porn content of social media. As a result so many people are brainwashed into using them as part of their response to just about everything, they have no actual value.
As an example: In a family group on WhatsApp, where the post showed a famous person ageing backwards over decades, I responded saying “Growing old is a disease”. The response I got from one of my offspring was a pep talk telling me to “not sweat it about growing old” and finishing with, “it’s a privilege denied to many”. It was exactly the kind of meme-speak I’ve grown to despise, it presumed I was talking about myself and not the subject of the video, pretty much told me I was lucky to be still breathing, and the bigger sin, it came from someone 20 years younger than me who couldn’t possibly know what being my age was all about. In this case sympathy was a far better option than the ham-fisted attempt at empathy.
So here’s my plea: give sympathy a chance, stay away from empathy where you couldn’t possibly know how it feels, and above all else – don’t stoop to clichéd meme talk.
