I ran across a quote recently that’s challenged my thinking.
I’ve become comfortable with the idea that empathy means “walking in the other guy’s shoes.” Then here comes the brilliant Dr. Brené Brown.
We need to dispel the myth that empathy is walking in someone else’s shoes. Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.
Now I have to ask hard questions.
Am I really willing to listen to your story? Without interruptions, or correcions, or judgments?
Am I really willing to believe you? Even when your story doesn’t match my experiences, what I’ve learned, my values, my deeply-held beliefs? Am I still willing to believe that’s what it’s like in your shoes?
+ + +
For me, and maybe for you, those are tough questions that get tougher as issues become more divisive.
I’m thinking about the Home of Hope, and about the folks who go into the brothels every day to create no-strings-attached relationships in the most horrible place I can imagine.
Would I listen patiently, non-judgmentally, to the stories of the people in that awful place? To traffickers? To prostitutes? To fathers who sold their children? Would I really do that?
And would I believe them? Because I’m pretty sure our experiences wouldn’t have a lot in common.
I claim I want to be a person of empathy. Jesus and I need to talk.