Empathy Connects Us

08/06/2018

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or culture also become a dead people.
Malcolm X

Ann Pelo, in her heartfelt book, The Goodness of Rain, explains the importance of helping children develop empathy, and defines it this way:

“Empathy: the awareness of another being’s feelings; the ability to take up another being’s point of view. We nurture empathy when we practice seeing the world from new and unfamiliar perspectives. Looking into a window, not into a mirror, we see from another being’s point of view, we imaginatively enter into another being’s experience...

Empathy sizes us in right proportion to others, not more-than or better-than, or worthier-than, but connected by the shared capacity for joy and suffering. Empathy asks that we consider the well-being of other creatures when we act.”

Gryphon House - Simple Signing with Young Children

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