empathy, n.Definitions

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change.

Empathy is first and foremost a simple matter of paying attention to the person in pain.

Empathy is an emotional process whereby similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. As such, empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is it hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.

Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.

Empathy is not as complicated when one has some aspects in common with some other. Reading exemplifies this in that it accustoms us to inhabiting other lives and sensibilities.