Tag Archives: empathy

I do not think you need a degree in psychology to recognize that our society is experiencing an empathy crisis.

As a Lay Chaplain, with empathy having opened the door and now standing or seated beside the bed of someone less a stranger, I continue to listen with deep attentiveness.

I ask myself, was I able to effectively engage this diversity, to the extent I did, because I had empathy – somehow already endowed with it? Or did my empathy grow as I continued to engage diversity, in high school, college and professionally – is empathy somehow learned?

Each day, as I got out of my bed, I found myself walking the halls of the University of Washington Hospital, hooked up to life-sustaining IVs. As I passed by opened doors, anything but oblivious, I gazed into the rooms of perfect strangers. Each was on their own journey of crisis, some getting better, others, not so.

Is it possible to run out of empathy?

The people who are mourning and praying for Paris on Facebook are engaging in an act of empathy.