By Anu Dev
Most of us do it every day – we judge the people around us. And we do so through the lenses of whatever prejudices and perceptions we might have of that person.
We really don’t take the time to put ourselves into their shoes. Even Simba couldn’t help but leap to conclusions about Kovu in “The Lion King 2”. We had a class this week about empathy, what it means to be empathetic and the neuroscience behind empathy. It was an amazing lecture; it really gave me a lot to think about. It made me wonder about whether in my everyday life, how much time I actually take to put myself into other people’s shoes.
And it made me think back to the times that the people around me were empathetic to what I was going through.
As far as classes go, it was a thought-provoking one. Seeing videos of little babies displaying empathy, MRIs of persons feeling pain when someone they’re close to is in pain really kinda drove home the message that empathy is something innate within us.
Why then, do so many of us still walk around preoccupied in our own little bubbles? As a society, we can be pretty quick to judge people based on their clothes, their house, their car or their phones before getting the chance to see what kind of decisions they make, what type of actions they take.
And there are just so many misconceptions about everyone floating around.
If there’s someone sitting off to the side by himself, obviously you judge him as being snobbish, when actually, he’s just extremely shy. We’ve all had these ‘shy moments’ and we should be able to at least remember them when seeing someone behaving just as we did during those moments instead of leaping to the conclusion that the person is standoffish.
Yes, it’s true, some people are more intuitive and more perceptive than others and they’ll be better at showing empathy, but we’re all capable of empathy and we should try to be empathetic to the best of our ability.
It’s easier to just pass off someone as being lazy or a slob just because they’re dressed a bit sloppily. But the thing is they could just be having a really bad day.
They could be a hard worker, they’re usually impeccably dressed, it’s just that today was an ‘off day’ for them.
We need to remember to empathise with the people close to us. Too often we miss the people right in front of us, and we gloss over the things that might be going on with them. We have to start being there for them and taking the time to just listen.
We can’t always empathise with every single person around us – we don’t know everyone nearly half as well enough, but we can at least try to be more considerate, to be more human.