Empathy is a verb

I’ve been talking about how empathy is something we do for a while now.  It’s not enough to have empathy: you have to use empathy.  If you want it to really work to create understanding and connection, anyway.

I think playing with words is fun though, and it suddenly occurred to me that what I wanted was an action word, and that’s what a verb is, right?  A noun names something, a verb talks about an action (in a broad sense).  And that’s what I’m really saying: empathy should be an action, not just a name.

Take for instance something I saw at the airport last week.  I saw a lady in a wheelchair trying to get through security.  She was definitely older and it seemed that she wasn’t really used to flying, meaning this was all probably kind of scary with a lot of noise and movement. She was having trouble hearing what the TSA agent was saying. But rather than slowing down and helping, he barked at the lady like she was an inconvenience.  Here’s the thing though – all of us watching definitely had empathy, but none of us used it.  We just watched it happen.

First of all, let me underline that I’m not exempt.  There’s lots of reasons why I didn’t step in – it all happened so fast, I was at the back of the line, we’re all a little cowed by TSA and are used to this kind of behavior, I was worried about my flight, whatever.  But the result is that I didn’t do anything, and because of that, it’s really been on my mind.  I had the opportunity to make my empathy actionable and make a life a little better, and I didn’t.

Second, what does it say that we’ve allowed this to be ‘normal’ and that someone showing empathy exhibits an act of rebellion?  We’re in a time where people would rather turn to AI for empathy (which it can’t have, by definition).  I think this says so much about us as a society, and it’s not good.

As much as I dislike airports, they always give me things to think about and an insight into society.  And, while I don’t like some of what I saw, including what I saw in myself, I have hope that we can still turn it all around.  When empathy and kindness are no longer the norm, maybe we need a little rebellion.