Just received this and was moved so decided to share with you all

But it seems designed to put me firmly in my place so I suppose there's not a lot to add. Move over Grace!!

Aka How can anyone, apart from the OP, empathise with the person who sent her the original chain e-mail - except, as I said earlier, on the most superficial level insofar as they are both human beings? It is not possible to share someone's feelings if you have no idea what those feelings are or how that person got to the point of feeling them. Sometimes it is not possible to share someone's feelings even when you do know, although you may still sympathise with them.

Could the op have been directed at one person? It clearly fell a bit flat, didn't it?

I started to write a very comprehensive reply to your posts explaining my feelings and experiences and how they would help me to 'walk in someone else's shoes' and then deleted it thinking 'what the hell' it will only get picked over, dissected and ridiculed so why bother.

Not a nice place to be at the moment is GN.

So will leave it for today at least and get on with real life.

I cannot empathise with the pleasant young woman at the checkout at Pac n Save this afternoon, other than sharing a rueful smile about the delays with the credit/debit card scanner caused by warnings of bad weather further south and agreeing that going home time will be welcome.

I can sympathise with the granny who feels hurt and neglected because her adult daughter rings her less often than once a month. I think she is mistaken when she says that she believes that this means she has been sidelined and no longer loved. I cannot empathise with her when she says she feels lonely, neglected, unloved and unwanted because I think she is over reacting and not thinking things through. Nevertheless those feelings are real, so I sympathise, not empathise with her hurt feelings.

I am at a complete loss to empathise with the young woman whose ex-partner was recently executed after several years on death row after being convicted of killing her child. I love her and value her - but suggesting that I can even begin to share her feelings strikes me as arrogant and dismissive in the extreme.

Sympathy:- an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other.

Empathy:- the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

The terms are used more loosely than they used to be. In their pure form, both of these definitions imply a real suffering on the part of one person when another is suffering - crying, unable to move on, feeling depressed - vicariously experiencing their emotions. I would say that empathy is the more extreme. Someone with true empathy for another will sit with them and weep.

I would hesitate to claim that I have empathy for another, it would mean that I spent my days worrying about them, unable to think of anything else. It is enough to realise that they must be experiencing a dreadful time and send a little warmth and strength to them. It is NOT necessary for me to make a public scene of how much I am suffering for them and with them.

Does that make me hard hearted and callous?

Aka says GN is not a nice place to be at the moment - I agree, and would cite calling people's comments "vulgar", being dismissive by saying one "doesn't care" what someone else (me) thinks and replying "Really?" when I felt it was not necessary to be insulting is precisely what contributed to that observation. Do as you would be done by.

No, Elegran, it makes you normal! I am always baffled when politicians say about a grieving family, whom they have never met, 'Our thoughts and prayers are with them'. Oh, yeah? And what good will that do the family anyway?
Like most people, I feel very sad about the situation of people, especially women and children, who are repressed, violated, and abused throughout the world, but I don't know any of them personally,so other than signing petitions and organising my charity donations, there is nothing I can do and I can't pretend I lie awake thinking about it.

When Rick Gervais saw Twitter messages saying that Beyonce and Rihanna were sending their thoughts and prayers to the people caught in the tornado recently, he quipped 'I feel stupid now, I only sent money.'

Empathy, pity, sympathy - all worthy in their way, but a bit of active compassion says volumes.

I have read and appreciated the definitions of sympathy and empathy on this thread. Thank you. I think I was beginning to confuse them a little because someone said last year that I was the most 'empathic' person in a group. I had to look it up to be sure what she meant. Perhaps it was a Scottish usage.

The group, btw, was fighting primary schools closures in Argyll and Bute.

Bang on, when!

The active compassion bit.

The problem with empathising (as I tend to do) is that you end up seeing the other person's side of things and forgetting your own interests -- which can be fine, but can also make you dilatory and ineffective... it can also make you a sucker for a sales pitch!

Some of this thread I can't make head nor tail of. It's a bit stap me vitals what's it all about. I'm not sure about the distinction of sympathy / empathy. At the moment I have a friend whose close relative is very slowly dying. I have been in a similar situation a few years ago, therefore I can empathise when we meet and there are brave smiles and I can sympathise when I provide an opportunity for weeping bitterly. That is my take on it. I can't say I ever read the verses in glittery cards so I bow to the judgement of those who do and can tell us what they are like. I expect I would be tearful if I read them as I am quite soppy - not kittens and puppies YouTube soppy but I was scorned for liking Tears idle tears I know not what they mean ' at an English tutorial in my teens and I still like it.i still like lots of Tennyson. Possibly not grown up.

I'm a Tennyson fan too, stansgran. I think my favourite is probably Ulysses. But I'm also a Ted Hughes fan. He is quite different. Love his Thrushes and The thought-fox, for instance.

I know perfectly well the difference in meaning between 'empathy' and 'sympathy' just as I know the difference between 'worry' and 'concern' and 'emotive' and 'upsetting'. But I believe some words are now preferred over the others either because people don't know the difference or because they sound more 'edgy'. (And I know what 'edgy' means, did mean and is now used for, as well)

stansgran I could tell of similar situations but then someone said that talking about your own empathy was wrong!

I make no apology for sympathy or empathy (I do know what they both mean!) and yes, it can get you into trouble from the people who don't have those feelings feetle. However I would rather be the person who cares, empathises and sympathises even though others don't like it and I may be hurt because of it. A kind heart never hurt anyone.

moved No-one has said they don't like caring, sympathy or empathy, and I would argue that it is someone's psychological make-up, as opposed to their experiences, that enables them to empathise/sympathise more or less effectively with other people. Some people have natural empathy and take up appropriate careers; other people become engineers.*
What some of us have objected to was the literary style of the email you posted, the truthfulness or ortherwise of its sentiments, and the exhortation to pass it on to our friends.
*joke

jane I get the engineers joke, used to work with them!

I did not suggest that anyone said "they don't like caring, sympathy or empathy". Perhaps you mis-read my post?

moved you said
" I make no apology for sympathy or empathy (I do know what they both mean!) and yes, it can get you into trouble from the people who don't have those feelings feetle"
I took this to mean that you thought some people did not have feelings of sympathy and empathy;

and " I would rather be the person who cares, empathises and sympathises even though others don't like it"
I thought this meant that you thought some people did not like caring, empathising etc.
sorry if I have misinterpreted your meaning.

Jane That is the impression I got from the post too, and I was about to post that no-one is condemning her for having feelings of sympathy and empathy - far from it, they are praiseworthy - but only hoping that she does not assume that those who do not trumpet their empathy do not have any, or that those who do not like manufactured commercial emotions are devoid of real and natural ones.

I read it that way too Elegran but as I am so frequently accused of misinterpreting what the poster has said, I assumed she meant something entirely different.

* jane* elegran exactly!

jane sorry, yes you have misinterpreted my meaning. It was not directed at anyone, not on Gn or anywhere in particular but you are correct in thinking that I believe there are people like that! I have certainly come across people who only think of themselves and I suspect we all have.

Thanks for clarifying that moved.