Empathy is a Verb

If you feel pain, then you’re alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you’re a human being.

Leo Tolstoy

There is a great deal of discussion these days about the value of the virtue called empathy. Indeed, any virtue taken to an extreme could probably be considered a vice. However, I am going to land on the side of risking that empathy must be explored and exercised much more deeply in our current culture.

To that end, I would suggest that empathy is a verb. I know, it is technically a noun, but for me, to paraphrase a quote often attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “silence in the face of evil is complicity”. Therefore, to feel empathy and do nothing about it feels wrong to me.

I am thinking about the atrocities around the world to which we have apparently become inured. The vicious invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin- an adjudicated war criminal- continues and is nearing its three-and-a-half-year mark.

To date, that war has produced 1.4 million soldier casualties (killed or wounded) on both sides. There have been over 50,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties, both figures according to the U.S. based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Many thousands of those casualties have been caused because civilian targets have been a priority in this awful conflict.

So, empathy, -indeed humanity- says that we must speak out about this, and then do what we can to help people who are suffering and dying. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of suffering people in this world. Yet the suffering of this war is so needless, so senseless. It is the result of one man’s desire for empire and glory. Deliberate causation of human suffering is… evil.

I felt the need to speak out on this atrocity and, fortunately, I have this small platform to give expression. I am doing what I believe is right and I am compelled to respond. Further, I am donating to causes such as Doctors Without Borders which provides medical help to the places in the world where doctors are needed most.

I am convinced that we are called to respond to crises such as this, and many others as well. I am urging my readers to respond in ways that you feel called to respond, whatever that might be. I would also ask that you consider forwarding this blog so that it may reach others.

We can make a difference by using whatever resources we have at hand.

Let’s do that.