“The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.” – Henry Miller.
Having empathy means trying to personify a person’s perspective, emotions, and feelings.
It’s not just a feeling. It’s an ingrained feature of our species. It is as powerful as the sense of hunger or fear. Mirror neurons in the brain help you react by mimicking the activity of the brain of the sufferer.
Empathy is useful, but it has its dangers…
Someone with good values (like love, honesty, loyalty, courage, etcetera) will seek and do the right things, even if it doesn’t feel good. While someone with bad values (like domination, violence, pleasure, etcetera) will seek and do the wrong things, most likely because it feels good.
How then do you shape your values, to nudge yourself into doing good deeds?
When I was 13, I saw a dead body for the first time; and it was rotting.
A young man was caught and set ablaze earlier in the day, for stealing Garri at the waterside market…
If “good advice” exist and works all the time, why hasn’t everyone taken them and made their lives a thousand times better?
The reality is, no advice is good or bad in itself but is relative in contrast to different people and situations.
Even though Jesus made mention of places like Heaven, and Hell and the Bible listed laws and norms that may seem made-up or outdated in modern times, the teachings and lifestyle of Jesus Christ are still useful today (because they teach us how to be good people).
Norms are indispensable if we must develop as a society and as individuals. However, those societal standards or expectations may sometimes conflict with your interests and desires, and this leads to Intrapersonal or internal societal conflict.
A good person is someone willing to do what it takes to better their lives and that of those around them and not merely a person who tries to follow some arbitrary rule of right and wrong. This is because what we consider good or bad may change with time and place.
“The Greek word for ‘good’ (agathon) does not have a moral meaning. It just means ‘beneficial’. Conversely, the word for ‘evil’ (kakon) means ‘not beneficial’. Our world is rife with injustices and misdeeds of all kinds, yet there is not one person who desires evil in the purest sense of the word…”
A spontaneous person does what they believe is right, without depending on external motivation. They can commit and do what it takes even when the external environment or circumstances are not pleasant…even when they don’t feel like it.
Although introverts are people who don’t have issues (and even enjoy) being alone with their thoughts, I encourage my introverted friends to connect with people they don’t know despite the anxiety or difficulty they may experience. This is because I discovered that I (who is also an introvert) became happier, more refined, and driven when I started connecting with and opening up to more people who didn’t know:
