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Jill Mabley's avatar

Thank you again dear Massimo for your lesson. My experience (I’m a physician, specialty emergency medicine) is that empathy (which is taught and encouraged primarily by hospital admin) is wrong. Compassion is right. With empathy, it degrades into “I know how you feel” etc with the emphatic on “me, me, me”. Compassion allows for sympathy and for a plan of action to relieve suffering.

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Jennifer Sears's avatar

While Epictetus was writing during a time where death and illness took lives more often than what most of us experience, and so uses that example, I also see this passage as providing a way for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives to cultivate our own neutrality to everyday losses, like the little disappointments that come with aging. Indeed, as Epictetus says, “Such things must happen.” I know I can’t fight gravity or time, but women especially are encouraged to believe they might with all of those ads for products and procedures. We could practice "sympathy and sociability" with everyone on this matter and yet we often end up feeling (as in the passage from Epictetus), “Woe is me!” Or, "how can this be happening?" Or, maybe if I buy X, I really will look better. Or, I’m too young to need another hearing test.

It would be so much easier, more frugal, and even enjoyable if we could find more ways to share sympathetic laughter over this process we share with everyone in our lives.

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