Research on elephants is full of examples of the animals apparently behaving empathetically recognizing and responding to another elephant’s pain or problem. Often, they even make heroic efforts to assist one another.
Empathy is understanding and relating to an experience of another, being able to understand the perspective of another, to momentarily view reality through the eyes of another, to walk that mile in another’s shoes.
To understand their perspective, their hardship, their life so that you may respond with love, with non judgment, and in a way which serves the other and serves all. This is similar and yet somewhat different from being an empath. An empath relates to the feeling and experience of others with a psychic sense, with a sense that is beyond the physical. Feeling the emotion of another, feeling the joy, the love, the sorrow, the tragedy of another as if it were one’s own. Interestingly, elephants have been proven to be confirmed empaths. Elephants help each other in distress, grieve for their dead, and feel the same emotions as each other-just like us.
The need for empathy
It’s the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. We must take care to also not forget the ‘golden rule’; “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
