Shownotes Transcript
去年秋季的时候，GRE老师教研，遇到一道填空题说：共情是很妙的事情，但是无法打破精神上的隔阂。我当时非常的同意，因为一直坚信没有真正的「感同身受」。但这几个月的经历，又让我有了一些新的感悟。也许，没有所谓「真正的感同身受」。但你愿意去倾听和体会，你愿意去相信和提供帮助，这本身就是一种很美好的事情，我想称它为「共情」。这期，根据我自己的经历，我从“自我”聊到“共情”，并且区分了一下“共情”和“同情”，如果你也有类似的体会，欢迎留言，讨论，转发～As you guys can see, I am a teacher who have been teaching GRE verbal section for more than 10 years. Recently, I encountered a question in the text completion part, which says "empathy is a wonderful thing, but it does not defeat mental separateness because all attempts to grasp the subjective experience of another are interpretations, not acts of merging." I agreed with this point in the past few years. I think it's impossible that persons share the same feelings. When your friends say"I can feel exactly what you felt", it doesn't mean they really could feel that, but just mean they think they are capable of having the shared feeling. Yes, I was a skeptic to the concept of empathy. And meanwhile, I was proud of myself that I could hold my own point of view. In other words, I had my ego, an ego that led everything I had in my life. But is that true: there is no such a thing called empathy? Everybody who would like to live an independent life must have their own ego? I am going to talk about something of "ego and empathy". This episode would be a little bit esoteric, and as well I will leave the script in the shownotes. I'm Yvonne, and welcome to BT English. First of all, I'd like to clarify my definition of Ego. Ego here, it's more like "insisting what you genuinely believe in and think"than arrogance or narcissism. In this aspect, Ego is not a completely bad idea. Using myself as an example, my ego led me to my career and brought me confidence. As a GRE teacher, I have to study the reading material deeply and seriously by my own. Unless 100% sure about the questions in the examination, without my own understanding or thinking, I couldn't deliver the knowledge to my students effectively. I have to hold my ego that "I am very familiar with GRE and I am pretty sure what I am teaching in class is right." Speaking of which, I do think that ego lead me a way to becoming more and more professional in my own field. OK, enough with the bright side of Ego, I am gonna turn to another side. I heard a lot of saying about "shedding your ego". I agreed with that, especially in the daily life. When you communicate with other people, when you wanna make some new friends, the most important thing is listening. You need to pay attention to what other people are talking about. At this moment, "what you genuinely believe in and think" doesn't that matter, your conversation and communication matters. That means, you need to put down your beliefs for a while, and focus on other's narrative. Or I can say, when you are the narrator, go ahead with your ego; but when you are a listener, please drop your ego down and just listen. Ego in this situation would interrupt the flow of communication. And when you shed your ego, you are on the way to empathy. I'd like to distinguish two words with some similarities: sympathy and empathy. Some people use these two words in a synonymous way. The overlap is real, but they're not identical. Sympathy is understood as an ability to see other people's pain or misery, and to feel sorry and compassion for their suffering. Empathy is different. Empathy is not feeling sorry, it's more like, here, I'd like to quote a saying from Pharrell Williams "empathy is about looking at someone's experiences through their lenses. " Yes, through their lenses. A lot of us are very set in our ways. We think what we think. We feel what we feel. And we're not really interested in outside points of view. But you don't really ever grow when you allow yourself to be constrained like that. Empathy here is to show you way out of limitations, to build up a connection between you and someone else, to widen the aperture of understanding. Here is my story. Instead of criticism and reproach, I felt empathetic to Strickland, a character in the book and musical The Moon and Sixpence. He is a very controversial character who has been criticized for his irresponsibility and ego many years. But when I was sitting in the theater, going through all his thoughts and ideas in the story, I could understand his thinking and his feeling. I did look at his experiences through his lenses. I knew that he abandoned his wife and children not because of his irresponsibility but because of his dream, a dream to paint exactly what had happened to him. A dream goes beyond his secular life. Empathy doesn't mean "I agree with you", but means "I don't judge you and I care". You're not self-centric anymore, and you shift from selfish to selfless.So, my dear friends, do you have any story to share? Or what's your opinion about Ego and Empathy? You're more than welcome to leave comments down below. I'm Yvonne, and see you next time.