Empathy

Empathy: "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."  

Empathy is different than sympathy, which is empathy without the personal experience, aka pity.  Most people claim that empathy is always the more powerful emotional response of the two, however I find that in this respect I differ from the majority of the population.  My most powerful emotional responses have always been toward animals' sufferings.  I do feel for people in difficult situations, but animals in bad situations inflame my emotions tenfold of any empathy or sympathy I have ever felt for a person.  I am sort of afraid of being perceived as heartless or uncompassionate because of this, but I will own my emotions here.  The video "The Collector at Bedford Street" made me happy to see a community support one of it's members, but I was much more emotionally impacted to see the community of buffalo join together to save their baby.  The challenges that humans face are more moderate than being eaten alive by lions while crying out futilely for help from your parents, however humans do face the metaphorical equivalent.  That is probably part of the reason my emotions are stronger with regard to animals-because the challenges they face are so much more brutal than human challenges, though human challenges can be just as severe/fatal in the end.  

Also, in the video "Battle at Kruger," there were multiple sets of emotions that I felt that contrasted one another.  On one hand, I know that the baby buffalo would have had a miserable, short existence if it had been eaten alive.  On the other hand, the lions need to eat, and they spent a lot of energy capturing the buffalo.  Contrary to the Disney "the lion is the king of the jungle" attitude, lions are actually denied their prey on a routine basis.  So my emotions were divided, because I thought the lions still deserved to eat, but it would have pained me to see a baby buffalo eaten alive.  

During the past week I read a story that broke my heart.  I would tell you not to read it if you don't want to experience sadness, but I am beginning to realize that just because something is sad doesn't mean we should avoid it or emotionally withdraw.  So I'm going to recommend reading this, even if you don't feel like acknowledging that the world has problems today.  

http://uglythecat.com/