🇬🇧 Empathy

It is an immense cliché to say that empathy is doing to others what we would like them to do to us. The other is the other. His needs and expectations are different. And only by knowing each other well are we able to exercise real empathy. Without that, we must use some wisdom in human relationships, with awareness of our humanity and that of the other.

I was asked a question about the importance of emotional control in the workplace and I remembered a case that I experienced in college, which illustrates well this issue that empathy should not be doing to others what we would like them to do with us.

I was studying advertising during the last semester and we had a work in group to finish. I had a different team than my usual one who accompanied me throughout the course, because two of them owed some optional subjects. And in the group there was a girl in an advanced state of pregnancy. I am easy with male friendships, because I can usually be very direct and nobody is offended by anything. And I had no idea how to deal with a pregnant person. Doing what I would like them to do to me in the same situation, I suggested saving her from activities that required more physical effort. And she started crying and saying that I treated her as an invalid.  🤦🏻‍♀️ An extra comment is worth it: since I was very young I have the notion that intellectual work is worth more than physical work, and the team had eight people. If I think she could stay in more intellectual work, that should be a source of pride and not complaining tears. Okay, I have no idea how hormones can make a pregnant woman freak out.

The point is: we had different points of view and expectations regarding work. In fact, the differences were many because we had very different work systems. This ended up directing me to always work with what I believe in, with what makes my heart flutter, because I know it is complicated for me to work when there is no synergy with my work team, when I do not believe in the brand and when the way of working is very different from what I consider ideal for that purpose. This wisdom and maturity to select jobs and friendships in adulthood, respecting individuality, needs and expectations, is important. And what I understand as true empathy, which involves understanding or perceiving the other's expectations and needs, is only possible with real connection, friendship, closeness.

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Nycka, the Nomad