"Empathy... More Powerful

Than Forgiveness"

Article by Kristin Denton
Thursday 8:25 PM
Estes Park, Colorado

August 7, 2006

Empathy is the process of creating heart-felt understanding and compassion for another person and their feelings and needs. Giving somebody empathy is far more powerful than forgiveness. Empathy connects one person’s feelings and needs to the same feelings and needs in the other person, thus creating the magic of a human bond.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, implies that the person was ‘wrong’ and that they ‘owe’ the other an apology for their ‘guilt’ and that the first person might ‘forgive’ their wrong-doing.

People say, ‘If you’re truly sorry for what you’ve done, and the pain you’ve caused me, then perhaps I’ll forgive you.” But, hey! Get out of that world of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’, deserving and owing! That is the violent, hurtful world that we all grew up in. We’re older now and we want a peaceful, loving world. We want to create a connection with our loved ones, not build a case against then and push them away.

Remember, that all actions are strategies to get a human need met. If we need food, we eat. We don’t need to apologize for that.

Now, eating the whole pie that mom just baked for her bridge party... that might be a poor strategy for getting my need for sustenance met. But was I bad, wrong, and stupid? Let’s not even go there.

My mother is far more enlightened now than back when I might have pulled the pie caper... But if somebody had taught her the Language of Peace back then, she might have said, “Kris, I see that you ate the pie I just baked. Were you feeling hungry and needing something to eat?”

“Yes, ma’am.” (We were required to say ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’ to our parents – it’s a Southern thing.)

“Hmm, well let me share with you my feelings and needs. When I see that you’ve eaten the pie that I baked for my bridge party this afternoon, I feel very sad and disappointed, because now I don’t have anything to serve to my guests. I have a need to contribute to my guests and to create community through the sharing of food with them. Would you tell me what you heard me say?”

Little, tubby Kris would respond, “You feel sad and disappointed because you have a need to create community with your friends and I ate the pie you were going to share with them.”

“Right, that was how I was going to create community with my friends, by sharing the pie. So now I feel sad and discouraged that I don’t have that. Would you be willing to help me figure out another strategy for sharing food with my guests? Would you be willing to take some money out of your piggy bank so we can run over to Safeway and buy a pie?’

Notice that the conversation isn’t on ‘fixing’ Kris, it’s on trying to decide on a strategy that would be suitable to help meet my mother’s needs for community with her friends. My mother never disputes that I was hungry and needed food – that really isn’t the issue here. The issue was the strategy I choose for meeting my need for food.

Should little, tubby Kris have to ask for forgiveness? No... Kris gains an understanding that she met her beautiful need for food with a strategy that made it a more difficult for her mother to meet her need for community. And the mother finds compassion for her child’s feelings and beautiful needs. Hopefully she doesn’t make the trip to Safeway a punishment, but merely a way for the child to contribute to her mother. And you know all children love to give to their parents.

Writing this was very cathartic. I suddenly feel closer to my mother (not for the pie – incident. That never actually happened, but for other little antics I pulled).

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