I've chosen to make working with the homeless an essential part of my life, and I imagine that people who know this make basic assumptions about me and my motivations, and people might use terms such as compassion, sympathy or empathy. And those terms would be apt, but those terms should not be used interchangeably. I will summarize/plagiarize the differences as they've been explained to me as follows:
Sympathy are the feelings one has in response to someone else's situation. And you see it commonly expressed as follows: "I'm sorry for your loss." The thing is that it's about one's own response and otherwise does little to alleviate another person's suffering..
Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling. And some people who are suffering can benefit more from empathy than sympathy, but it's been suggested that empathy can be taken too far such that it can lead to tribalism among those with shared experiences, which can involve "good" feelings such as joy. I confess that I might have reacted this way in how I appreciate certain interests.
Compassion drives a desire to help people who are suffering in some way. Some would claim that compassion take sympathy/empathy up a notch, but I'm not yet convinced that this is so, perhaps because I've observed some who've perhaps only wanted to appear compassionate. But to be fair, compassion does seem to play a factor in avoiding the development of tribalism out of empathy.
The overall point is that it's my take that anyone who seeks to help other people should be influenced by a combination of all three of these motives, and my life experiences have enabled me to do that when it comes to wanting to help the homeless..
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