Empathy is easy to define. When I feel empathy towards you if I heel your emotions as my own. When you feel pain, so do I. When you feel joy, I share in it. The same goes for anger, excitement, and etc.
Empathy is understanding of a situation and of the response. To empathize is to know. Thus empathy in necessart for love. If I do not know you, how could I love you? I would be loving, yes, but only an image, a lie. To love a person one must know that person, one must empathize.
But is love inherently a part of empathy? Empathy means I feel happy when I think of you happy. Love means I feel happy when I think of you at all. Perhaps though this is best illustrated with negative emotions.
Empathy alone will make one seek to avoid the pain of another, even if that fundamentally changes the other. Love will overcome this instinct and show a person that the pain is part of the other and cannot be removed if it is at the expense of the loved.
Empathy seeks change and growth, while love is complacent, accepting. Which is better? I would argue either, or neither. It depends.
In a parent, empathy is fundamental. Parents must protect their offspring, or else their genes will be lost to evolution. This process has produced a strong protective and empathetic parental instinct. A mother or father will feel pain and joy as their baby does.
But a good parent also must shape their kid into a functional, strong adult. They cannot afford the luxury of love; it is too important for them to teach their child how to live.
Friends or spouses, on the other hand, are not in the position and do not have the responsibility to mold a person. Thus they can be wholly supporting and loving. They help by influencing circumstance, not personality.
And that is the difference between love and empathy. It's a question of what you would change.
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