Empathy, compassion, understanding, awareness—what happens when we try to put ourselves into others’ shoes?
Empathy is a relatively common word, but it’s also a concept that is poorly understood. It’s sometimes confused with sympathy, pity, or feeling sorry for someone. According to Edith Stein, a German phenomenologist, empathy can be facilitated. It also can be interrupted and blocked, but it cannot be forced to occur. When empathy occurs, we find ourselves experiencing it, rather than directly causing it to happen. [Reference here in PDF]
Last month, Vancouver Island University student Emma Irving, a member of the Nanaimo Working Group on Homelessness, organized an overnight campout in a downtown park for people who wished to experience what it would be like to be without a home to sleep in.
Victoria resident and Zen practitioner Sei-in Remy Jordan has participated in “street retreats” involving living on the streets of Victoria and Vancouver for 4 days and 3 nights at a time—“bearing witness” to another reality.
We speak with Emma Irving and Sei-in Remy Jordan.
