I have come to understand something late, and not comfortably: how separate we really are from one another—and how much of that separation is chosen.
Empathy is praised endlessly. It is invoked casually, almost ceremoniously, like a moral password that signals decency without requiring any effort. We are told to “have empathy,” as if it were a posture rather than a discipline. But empathy, in its original Greek sense, was never trusted as a virtue. Empátheia meant being drawn into another’s passions—absorption so complete it could overwhelm judgment. It had force. It had danger. It did not pretend to be safe.
What we practice now is something thinner. Not empátheia, but performance. A brief facial contraction. A murmured acknowledgement. A phrase offered as absolution—that must be hard—followed immediately by retreat. Modern empathy is efficient. It minimises contact. It allows one to appear humane without being implicated.
What is rarer—and far more demanding—is sympátheia: to suffer wi…
