I thank God for spiritual sight. In the simplicity of playing a game of cricket with my son, encountering him in modes of both encouragement and discouragement, I saw in my own responses my propensity to misunderstand people, especially when they are speaking and acting in ways I don’t want them to speak and act.
But first, without spiritual sight I would not have been able to see this. This ability to see spiritually gives us the capacity to see in a moment of time as God sees.
In life, we all need to be aware of things we aren’t unaware of, which is a bit of a paradox. This is why having other people close to us, sharing with us what they see, is so vitally important. But even without the counsel of others, God can counsel us by the Holy Spirit.
In this particular case, what God wanted me to see was how my heart doesn’t naturally empathise with others at all times. Amid the need to understand in this situation, I was failing within my mind to be willing to do so, but as I became aware, I quickly turned and repented.
It can be a real challenge to empathise with family. We may ultimately empathise too much, and therefore enable maladaptive behaviours which are inevitably bad for them and others; or we may empathise too little, because sometimes it’s hard to understand family. We may feel they should know better. Or, we reel out a narrative that suggests they have always been “that way.”
But the same lessons apply in cases of relationships with others that are not family.
If we can understand and admit that we don’t naturally feel compassion toward everyone all the time, we can actually begin to tap into a prayer that we can carry with us. If we were to carry a brief breathe prayer with us that said, when someone is hurt, “Lord, help me see their pain not through my own eyes and experience, but through what may be theirs,” we may in the moment be able to encourage the person concerned.
When we are able to consistently display the empathy that encourages others when they are hurt, we resist the capacities of narcissism that can grow in any of us. When we consistently see in others empathy that encourages others, we can know that they are not narcissistic.
The narcissist doesn’t have empathy to encourage, although they may use “encouragement” as a weapon of manipulation to get what they want. Definitively, a narcissist is so self-interested they have no interest and no capacity to empathise. Others exist for the perpetuation of their needs. It is certainly very sad when empathy is weaponised as a tool of manipulation in narcissism.
But that isn’t how it is to be for us. We have been repelled by narcissism. The very concept of narcissism makes us nauseated. So, with that, we step toward others in the desire to understand.
We may even have wise bearing enough to seek to understand rather than to be understood, in the hope that others would reciprocate (without demanding this of them); in the hope that we would lead by good example.
The only way we can do this is by watching for others’ responses, and to believe their responses and to act as if those responses are true, because they are true for them, and being believed, for relational persons, is all that matters.
From such a position we are able to encourage, which is to put courage into them by our understanding when they lack courage.
Inevitably, the only way we can ever build relationship and be an agent for healing both within and without is through understanding which is empathy purposed to encourage.
You may ask, “Who is it that I may encourage?” because, quite frankly, not everyone responds to encouragement the same way. Some appear to not need it, while others may appear to use our encouragement, at times against us. It may enable them, and it may not encourage them to reciprocate in empathy.
It is clear that our encouragement is purposed mainly for those who both desire to be understood and who show a willingness to understand. In other words, they have the capacity to relate.
If we live to show empathy and to give encouragement, because we endeavour to understand the other person, we can be sure we are on a good road away from narcissism.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment