Most humans have the ability to imagine what others are feeling. Empathy is both a useful and frustrating trait. If we see another suffering, we can imagine how awful it feels and be moved to help out. Sometimes though we can’t help or don’t want to be reminded of an ugly or uncomfortable situation. It’s upsetting. To avoid the unpleasantness of having to imagine another’s pain, we might actively avoid looking at it. We can shun the exposure to another’s suffering to the extent that we inflict further suffering.

If you don’t enjoy looking at people sleeping under bridges or on benches, you might evict the homeless from your neighborhoods and towns. How can they better their situations then? You are now causing them further frustrations.

We may cringe at the thought of refugees coming to our borders as if their despair will rub off on us. They’re repellent to many despite their willingness to work in the most servile and lowly positions in order to escape poverty or conflict and provide for their themselves and their families. They’re willing to work where many don’t want to, yet why are so many pushing to get rid of them?

To avoid the hit to our self-identity as a “good people,” we might take a further step to justify ourselves by blaming or disparaging those who are suffering. If we can make them guilty of crimes or considered less moral, then their pain is deserved or least less-consequential. We degrade them in the pursuit of an unblemished conscience. We’d rather sacrifice another to clear the tangle our minds.

Something about empathy to remember is that we can also image good feelings as well. We can share in the feelings of relief, excitement or peace. We can be bettered by another’s betterment. Rather than avoiding the pain of others, we should help them and create a place of shared joy and ease. In order to feel good, it helps to actually do good.

This essay was originally posted in the Notes section of Facebook when they were trying to be a blog, but then they discontinued that feature. I forgot about it and then it showed up as a memory post and I reposted it here the minor edits.