A story which exactly shows how beneficial it is to shower empathy
#Trick to let someone open up to you.
The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Sympathy is asking, “What happened to you?”
Empathy is telling and asking, “I don't know what you are going through, but I know you will handle it. Would you like to talk about it?”
99 out of 100 times, people don’t want someone to whom they need to explain everything. They just want someone to be there with them in their low phase.
You can give a precious gift to someone by just staying there in their lows.
Let’s start with the story you are waiting for
A few months ago, I had a conversation with a girl. She was here in my town for her studies. Her actual home, she said, is far away. She lives here with her mother’s mom.
The conversation went like this:
She came and sat before me and interrogated, “You’re a writer. Right? May I have a conversation with you?”
For a moment, I was blown away. How does she know it? How does she know that I am a writer? Then I realized I had announced it earlier in my speech when she was there.
After getting blown, I told her about my writing experience and how I do it. For a while, I thought she didn’t want to hear what I was saying. It crossed my mind and provoked me to ask her how she felt here, but I didn’t. Instead, I ask her to tell me her backstory.
I asked her to tell me about her. She started talking about her family. She told me about her mother, that she misses her mother’s touch, and her mother didn’t ask her to do any household tasks.
While here, where she stays, she doesn’t get such an aroma around. The people here don’t converse with her. And after saying this, she started crying, and her tears came out. Still, she went further and told me about her brother.
She told me that her brother has gone through heart surgery, so he is weak and he needs to change his machine with time, which is fitted in his heart.
She told me how her brother forces her to massage her legs and misses those moments a lot.
She also told me these memories hit her hard. She wasn’t aware of it. These things are new to her, and it feels so bad. She feels so bad about it.
I was speechless at the moment. I just passed my handkerchief so she could wipe her tears as she was continuously crying. I knew she was missing her family a lot, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
I just listened to her.
After a while, she herself came to be in her normal state. I asked for my handkerchief back and put a statement there.
I told her, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but you are here for your family only. You also know it, right? The thing you are doing here is for yourself and your family. You can do it because this is the time.”
This was stupid, and I realized it immediately and put another statement there.
I said, “You can share your thing and talk to me whenever you want to. I am here for you, always.”
After this, she said, “I’ve never opened up this much and never talked about my family and the missing part. I felt good after sharing about it.”
She thanked me and went to attend her class.
To sum up the story, here are a few more words:
You'll feel hollow when you actually leave and live far away from them.
The story doesn’t end here. I am going to deep-dive into these on some other day. Today let’s be around the topic and unleash the beneficial trick.
#Trick to let someone open up to you.
Empathy.
Empathy is so underrated. You’ll never know how crucial it is to shower empathy until you experience it for real.
People are masters at hiding their pain and emotions. They don’t want the other one to know about their pain. People don’t feel like sharing their lows while experiencing them simultaneously. And it’s natural to not share because from the start we were only taught to not let anyone know what you are going through. It’s because people take it for granted and can use it against you. And this happens for real. People are used to it.
But showering empathy clears out all. Empathy eases the other one to open up. It tells the other person that you can talk about it. It’s safe here.
Empathy enforces speaking up. It tells you to speak up and feel good about it at the end. You have to talk about it here, as this is the right place to open up and share everything about it. It’s just fucking safe here. You can lighten your heavy heart here.
The thing you wanted from the start: Empathy gives it all. Not everything, but at least it lets you feel good about it.
Now you ask, how is this beneficial for me?
Coming to that…
How is it beneficial for you?
Taking this straight to the point.
And the benefit for you when you show empathy is you help the other one to feel good about themselves. Ultimately, you too feel good about it. It feels really good to see another person smiling purely in their low phase.
I think empathy is a benefit for all of us because we rarely find it. And when we find something rarely what we seek, we should stop finding it and start building it for others. So, you get it from anywhere.
I think we should ourselves start showing empathy to others so we don’t need to seek it here and there for us. It itself comes from the other side of the world.
And if someone doesn’t find this beneficial, then you are the person who takes the pain and emotions of others for granted and uses it against them.
What do you say about it? You can talk to me about it. I am here to listen to you.
That’s it. Find this beneficial? Do share it with your friends and family.
You can give a precious gift to someone by just staying there in their lows.