Tag Archives: empathy

I try to see the best in everyone. But this election, it has been nearly impossible for me to be kind and understanding of everyone

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?