Identify the difference among Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion. Illustrate with examples.
Empathy, sympathy, and compassion are three words that many use interchangeably. While these words are near cousins, they are not synonymous with one another.
- Empathy means that you feel what a person is feeling.
- Sympathy means you can understand what the person is feeling.
- Compassion is the willingness to relieve the suffering of another.
- In, other word while Sympathy focuses on awareness, empathy focuses on experience and Compassion focuses on action.
- For example, consider the issue of child labour. On seeing a child waiter in a restaurant if a person is just feeling sad, then he is sympathetic. But if he also connects himself or own children with that child or memorizes any of his life experience, then he is empathetic.
- But when someone unleashes himself from simply being a spectator and make some arrangements according to his capacity for the good ( like informing NGOs, arranging education, counselling his parents etc.) , then he has compassion.
- A public servant must possess all the three qualities depending on situation. Public servants are meant to serve and this requires developing a humanistic outlook and to go out-of-the way. These qualities [Sympathy, Empathy and Compassion] ensure that the public servants act sensitively and interpret the rules so as to advance public interest. This is all the more important in a country like India where most the citizens are not aware of their rights and obligations owing to their socio-economic conditions rather than out of ignorance. In their absence, the administration will become mechanistic, rigid and ineffective.
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