Sharing a post from last December, 13th as a part of Fandango Friday Flashback.

Enjoy!

Or walk in my shoes?

Can anyone feel what another person is feeling?

Since we all view life through our eyes, and these eyes give us a unique look. No two persons looking at the same thing, see it exactly the same. The reason is what our eyes see, our mind then interprets it so that we make sense of it. That is why in a given situation, a word or a picture evokes different responses from different people.

Sometimes when a person has gone through an extremely hard time in life, to them it feels that nobody can feel or understand their pain or the hardships they are going through. Hence the question:

Can you see through my eyes or walk in my shoes?

When we want others to know that we have a feeling of sympathy towards them, we use words like, I know or I feel it. Or we can say I can understand. By using these words we can tell others that even though we haven’t shared this experience with them, we can, using our previous experience in life or our empathy, understand how they might be feeling.

There is a term, shared grief. People going through a sorrowful experience together as in the loss of a loved one, share the same experience of grief. They all have gone through a similar loss. Their feelings may not be exactly the same but would be falling under the same category. These people would be able to understand each other’s feelings to a larger extent. Then there are people who share an exhilarating experience. They also have a pretty good idea, what others are feeling.

We can say words of empathy and sympathy but we really cannot experience what someone else is going through. Words are easy to come by. They are easily said but do they have an impact on the listener? When we express our support, and sympathy for the person suffering it can, in a way make them realize that even if we don’t share their grief, we are trying to understand it.

We develop empathy by trying to understand the feelings of others. There is a need to be empathetic or to develop a caring personality because it is an essential part of being human and to fit in the society. An uncaring or callous person is not only considered a misfit but can also be labeled as a sociopath by the people taking an extreme view.

We all have in our lives, hard times. How we handle these also depends on, how we perceive them. Developing an outlook in life, where we can see and put things in their proper perspective is an essential tool. This helps us to combat the hard times ourselves and to be able to understand what others are going through in a similar situation.

Let me know what thoughts you have on this topic.

#Keepitalive

#FFF