Truly fascinating, Maha, especially the praxis part of action & feeling feeding off of each other. I also picked up the idea from that Psychology Today link that what;s really worth appreciating is the interplay of these flavors of empathy. And that none of these are traits fixe din us, we can grow better in them all.

But.

I somewhat question if we can ever truly feel someone else’s pain, emotion- I think empathy is the *attempt* to do that, but unless we have experienced every influencing moment, pain, suffering, joy, abandonment, in someone’s life, I think we are aiming for as best an approximation as we can do. And this says, we are never quite there at full empathy, it’s like some Calculus limit that we may approach but never fully meet. That does not make it any less important, but to think we know fully every facet of another human is a bit presumptuous IMHO.

None of that takes away from what you are outlining, that empathy is not a singular thing. I’d dad that the other key is how much you can temporarily step out of your own experiences, judgments, contexts to try to absorb someone else’s. That’s a huge limit.

We can always, and should always try much harder.

Thanks for making me thing, again, you are on a blogging roll.