Forgiveness: Looking at Your Neighbor From the Love of GodSample

YOU! A Look of Empathy for Others

Let's analyze then: What is empathy? What is compassion? And what is sympathy? Let's delve into the meaning of these words:

Empathy: It's the ability to understand the emotions and feelings of others based on recognizing the other as similar.

Compassion: It's the feeling that manifests itself through contact and understanding of another's suffering.

Sympathy: It's solidarity and empathy shown towards one or more persons.

When we look around us, we realize that the other exists and that empathy, compassion, and sympathy exist both for us and them. After recognizing that it's valid to feel, it's the turn of the other. Those other people who share life with us and whom we must recognize also live according to their judgments, beliefs, fears, concerns, and dreams. Their gaze between judgments and beliefs also tells their story.

This offers me another perspective of the other, of that being who is by my side, who speaks to me from the other side. So, the first thing is to see the good in myself and not judge myself so harshly because with that same gaze, we constantly judge others, and that's when the world becomes a mirror to us.

From the book titled 'The Law of the Mirror' by Yoshinori Noguchi, it talks about the four laws, which are:

1. Everything that bothers me about the other is in me.
2. Everything the other criticizes and hurts me with is in me.
3. Everything I like about the other is in me.
4. Everything the other criticizes me about and doesn't affect me belongs to the other.

So, it can be said that we are in others, and others are in me. We are humans, each with a story that connects when, through empathy, compassion, and sympathy, I recognize in the other an equal and allow myself to be more patient and tolerant with them and, above all, with myself.

Yesterday's song says in its first verse:

• Everyone needs compassion
• A love that’s never failing
• Let mercy fall on me
• The kindness of a savior
• The hope of nations.

And these words remind us that everyone needs compassion, mercy, hope, and, above all, love! And they connect us with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:43-45 NLT:

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”

Today, we invite you to think: Who do you need to have compassion for?