Don’t be sympathetic but empathic

I thought that after reading The Hours, connectedness was no longer a word I was going to see again in the short stories. I know. I was wrong.  While reading “A small, good thing” I realized that this was no over.  In this magnificent story I could appreciate how we are all connected; no matter what we try and make an enormous effort to connect with everyone, yet we are all separate from each other.

In the story we can see that Ann and Howard are connected through the pain after their child’s accident, and how they are also connected to the baker after telling him that Scott died. This is product of empathy; a feeling we develop throughout our lives.

I found a video that explains perfectly what being empathic is, but first I want to make clear what sympathy and empathy are:

Sympathy implies recognizing that someone’s suffering while empathy is sharing someone’s suffering. So, empathy is characterized as a deeper emotional experience: putting into one’s shoes.

The Power of Empathy

Empathy is fully represented in this short story, for the characters try to understand one another and even if they cannot really do it, they try their best anyway. For instance, despite having no child, the baker understands the grieve Scott’s parents are living after losing their kid. He sees them incredibly sad, so he opens himself up and tells them more about himself. He is able to take the parent’s perspective by being empathic. He connects with something in himself that shares the same feeling the parents are suffering.

Another moment of sympathy that I liked in the story was when Ann comes across an African American family that was waiting for news about their child. They thought she was a nurse and asked her about the condition of their boy, though she said she was just looking for the elevator. After that, they were no longer interested in her, yet she remained there and talked about her son. Minutes past by and she wished she could talk more with them; people who were in the same kind of waiting. In the following lines we see another important episode of empathy in the story:

She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. She would have liked to have said something else about the accident, told them more about Scotty, that it had happened on the day of his birthday, Monday, and that he was still unconscious. Yet she didn't know how to begin. She stood looking at them without saying anything more.

 To finish, I would like to sum up all this with a sentence that is in the video I am sharing with you: “Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is CONNECTION.”