The Ripple Effect
Watching the Olympics is torture - if you suffer with empathy. Add being a mother to that and the angst grows exponentially. After watching the women go through their routines on the balance beam, through splayed fingers, I scanned my legs for bruises. I could feel every blow as their legs slammed the four-inch square block of wood. Why couldn’t I see bruises on my legs? I certainly felt them, and the gymnast’s disappointment.
It didn’t end there. I ached with the divers whose splash was too big, the men who stopped in the middle of their pommel horse routine because they lost momentum, and the archers who literally missed the mark. Don’t even talk to me about the athletes, spotlighted with a video clip of their life leading up to the Olympics, who fell short of their dreams!
Sympathy is a far cry from empathy. Although both involve strong feelings and end in -mpathy, they differ greatly. Sympathy is feeling for a person, whereas empathy is feeling with a person.
My first memory of the crippling effect of empathy happened as I was studying to become a dental assistant. One fateful morning I was assigned to the oral surgery department. There, a sixteen-year-old boy sat in the dental chair, awaiting third molar extractions. The instructors were aware of my limitations with all-things-pertaining-to oral surgery, but they were desperate. No one else was available so I was recruited to assist, assured by the instructor that she would be by my side at all times.
As the first incision was made, I was far, far away - in my mind. I was doing math in my head. This boy was sixteen years old. My brother was sixteen years old. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. It added up to me thinking my brother was in the chair, getting his wisdom teeth surgically removed. And I had to watch!
As I held the suction in this boys mouth, at least I think it was in his mouth, I slightly crossed my eyes to blur my vision, just a bit. But it was hard to block out the sounds. Clamping my hands over my ears was out of the question, it would not be sterile. My instructor asked how I was doing, and when I turned to her things really got fuzzy, without even crossing my eyes.
I soon found myself reclined in a darkened recovery room, a cool cloth on my forehead and my normally ivory-colored, lightly freckled face an odd shade of green. True to her word, my instructor was not only by my side, but also hovering over me, peering into my eyes. Here, the patient was getting his third molars extracted and I was in the recovery room. That’s empathy!
Suffering with empathy is why I can’t watch the news, and sometimes have to scroll a bit quicker on Instagram. When the news plays a clip of a plane crashing, the sensationalism of the event seems to override the fact that people are on that plane. Everyone is connected and matters to someone, yet we sit watching passively as someone else’s world is imploding. Yes, we feel bad for each victim’s family and friends, but what if we felt bad with them? The front door won’t be opening with a greeting that they are home. There is an empty place at the dinner table, forever. There will be no more hugs or quiet whispers of affection from that person on the plane that we just watched crash and erupt into flames as it hit the side of a canyon.
On the flip side, there are many positives to being empathetic. When an empathetic person says, “I know how you feel,” it takes on a whole new meaning. They are actually saying, “I feel with you.” Empathetic people tend to be more caring and compassionate, to see the humanity in those around them. And it has a tremendous ripple effect.
There is a commercial for kindness that starts with one person holding the door for another and follows people doing kind acts, triggered by that first one - the ripple effect. Now, imagine a commercial starting with someone being compassionate, and following the ripple of compassion triggered from that first act.
Saint Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.” When I looked up that quote to verify the wording, the tag words caught my attention: compassion, connecting, humanity, inspirational, love, and sharing. I had just written those words!
If empathy has a face it is Saint Mother Teresa. The ripple effect of her life continues to grow and spread. One small, caring act - one response of compassion continues to be felt long after her death. Imagine what our world would look like if today, instead of saying, “I feel for you,” each person could say, “I feel with you.”