Think back to moments in your life that were hardest. Were you sitting on the floor nearly lifeless with depression trying to figure out how to keep shelter over your head for the next month? Maybe you were mourning the death of a spouse and just barely kept the will to live.
Now imagine that feeling never went away, and you felt it every day.
You must understand that your feelings in your worst moments can be peoples’ default state their entire lives. Imagine waking up with that feeling. Going to bed at night with that feeling. Being interrupted during lunch with the feeling.
Whether they should be feeling this way or not is not relevant to the fact that they are. They may lack the capacity to learn philosophy and wisdom to escape the cage of their mind.
Empathy is defined as being able to understand feelings of another. You may be able to have some empathy towards this suffering, but you cannot fully understand the toll it takes day in and day out until you experience it yourself.
Imagine someone close to you believes 2+2=5. You would never be able to fully understand this perspective, as it is illogical to you. The same applies to empathy, where no matter how strong you believe you are at empathizing with others, you can never fully understand their suffering.
Keep this truth in mind and use it as a way to ground yourself and stay humble.
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