" I Know Just How You Feel"

            A grieving family,  a wake, a line of friends gathered to express their condolences, a 'well-meaning' neighbor uncertain about what to say offers:  "I know just how you feel".  A weary kinsperson of the deceased retorts, "The hell you do!"  What just happened ?

   What to say on such  occasions vexes many otherwise kind and articulate people and out come such bromides as: "He lived a long life"; "They are in a better place"; "It's for the best"; "She is with God now"; "You can have another child in the future".   Just being quiet with someone can sometimes be more comforting than 'the perfect word'.

    Confrontation with death or other losses can stir a range of emotions and bewilderment as to what we are experiencing and how to express it. Is it 'Regret' that such an event even occurred to another human, even someone whom we do not know or with whom we have significant differences ?

   Then there are those three words, often used interchangeably, which express rather  different sentiments: Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion.

   Sympathy conveys regret or pity for someone experiencing a difficult time. One dictionary indicates that sympathy  involves keeping our own feelings separate from the other person's experience.

   Empathy, however, indicates "understanding another person's emotions and suffering ...by putting ourselves in their place", even if we have not had the same experience ourself.  Empathy has been the target of harsh criticism recently by 'people in the news'. By contrast, the historian Hannah Arendt emphasized that "the death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism".  Compassion carries matters a step further by taking action to help the sufferer.

   Actions and words that confuse (whether deliberately or not) the distinctions of these responses have the effect of individual and societal harm.

       Satchel