On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

  On Empathy

As the Footloose Forester was describing the routing of his bucket-list road trip to Eastern Europe, his small audience of three listened politely. When he mentioned Auschwitz, Poland; and at that very moment, John Jacob who was sitting opposite him at the table exclaimed that he would cry.  His father George Jacob, who was sitting astride and to his left, immediately reacted with, “Anyone would cry” and his wife Carolyn Jacob blended in with the response, “It just makes me sad.”

The Footloose Forester knew then that he was in the company of a family that showed empathy, and in unison. There was no hiding or disguising their empathy, an emotion that dwells within us and becomes a part of who we are.

 types of empathy

Not all people possess and display empathy.  One line from a recent Mass homily also points to a distinction of personal caring that is embodied within the virtue of empathy, “you can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.”  In empathy, you give of your emotional self.  The Jacob family, in that defining moment, radiated affective empathy, somatic empathy, and historically-aware cognitive empathy; all on display like the petals of a beautiful flower.