By this time in the school year, every high schooler has read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. While the entire book is filled with wisdom, one of the most essential lines to the story is when Atticus advises Scout that to truly understand a person, we have to “climb into someone else’s skin and walk around in it.”

      Even though this concept seems strange at first, it is the best picture for empathy. In a world full of poverty, terrorism, and hardship, it isn’t hard to find something or someone to feel sorry for. However, there is an important distinction between feeling with someone and feeling sorry for them. And in a world full of “aw, I’m sorry” sayers, it’s important to say “I’m here for you.”

     Sympathy is pity. Sympathy has an end goal: to make the person you’re comforting happier. This is often a selfish goal, because it becomes about your success in comforting them, rather than their comfort.

     According to the book by Tim Brown, Change By Design, empathy is translating observations and insights into reactions. It is seeing how a person takes something and moderating how you mentally approach a situation. It is climbing into someone’s skin and walking around in it.

     Through empathy, we build bridges of insight into people’s lives. We want to “feel the world through their emotions.” Empathy is not an emotion, but rather the bridge that allows you to understand the emotions of the person who is suffering.

     Take abuse, for example. Whether it’s bullying, physical, or sexual abuse that a person suffers from, we cannot truly understand it until it happens to us. However, this in no way means that we should estrange ourselves from victims of a abuse.

     It’s important to think of what is most important to the person in their time of need–not what the technical “right answer” is, or how to get from Point A to Point B. We need to feel with them, not always focus on moving through the stages of grief in perfect order, 1 through 5.

     The greatest danger of sympathy is tricking yourself into thinking you’re such a great comforter, when in reality, the person hurting may feel sadder or angrier because of your pity. The answer is not, “well, the situation could be worse.” The answer is, “I’m sorry. Your situation hurts, and it’s okay to be hurt by it.” That is empathy.