Pain Teaches Us Empathy.....

     One of the greatest lessons pain can teach us, is a lesson in empathy. By definition Empathy reads:
Empathy has many different definitions that encompass a broad range of emotional states, such as caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.
It also is the ability to feel and share another person’s emotions. Some believe that empathy involves the ability to match another’s emotions, while others believe that empathy involves being tenderhearted toward another person. Compassion and sympathy are two terms that many associate with empathy, but all three of these terms are unique. Compassion is an emotion we feel when others are in need, which motivates us to help them. Sympathy is a feeling of care and understanding for someone in need. Empathy is distinct from sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion. Sympathy or empathic concern is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Pity is feeling that another is in trouble and in need of help as they cannot fix their problems themselves, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially an infant or a member of a mob) imitatively "catches" the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening.

 Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are characterized. If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate   and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained    and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.

It is said when one experiences pain, their ability to acquire empathy, which from definition would mean.....you feel what the other is feeling. That is so much deeper than just feeling poorly for them. So much more than even having compassion and service toward them. To identify with someone by almost becoming one with their pain, is so similar to the Lord himself, taking on our pains upon himself. In order for us to follow in the path of compassion, one must acquire a sense of empathy to motivate true oneness and unity with those we serve. We are taught that we are to become one and unified in service to one another. There really isn't a closer way to feel unity than to truly have empathy for others. Pain is excellent at training us to recognize and actually FEEL for ourselves what another may be travailing through in their pain. Sometimes empathy is troublesome. I know I have acquired so much empathy it is a burden at times to feel others feelings so intensely. But what burden is not made light, by showing compassion, kindness, service, and just relating to another's pain. We know we need to stand as a witness of God at all times, in all things, and in all places, and mourn with those that mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. Let us not turn our back on pain, but let it be a teacher of becoming one through empathy.