Empathy
n. the ability to share in the ‘feeling-with’ the Other.
Somatic empathy to/through the world amounts to a specific kind of knowing, a literacy unto itself. This felt/participatory pathein quality of empathy involves shifting things (happenings, phenomena, events, opportunities) on the outside, separate from me, into a felt experience; felt as part of myself. This is an entirely different way of knowing compared to a scientific knowing where one names and categorizes in a sterile and distant way. Rather than remaining isolated or separate, objectively appraising an event as an impartial observer, experience, in its idealized form pathein, is messy, implicated, and participatory. In this manner, Soma Literacy assumes that there is no objective knowing of experience. One must subjectively participate in the event. One must shift the sterile potentiality on the outside into a messy and implicated happening of outside/inside combined and felt.
. . . sensory and cerebral, . . . characterized by an inward responsiveness to an outward stimulation. (Bari, 2018, para. 2)
For instance, just around the COVID19 pandemic breakout, people raided grocery stores or hospital shelves and stocked up on more hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes or face masks than they could possibly need, they leave others vulnerable to infection and with even greater fear and loss of control. In a time of crisis, we need to worry about other people as much or even more than ourselves. (Empathy in Times of Crisis by Helen Riess)
Many regard empathy as merely a soft emotion of feeling sorry for others. Empathy is a powerful tool in times of crisis (see more at TEDx The Power of Empathy.) Our hard-wired capacity for empathy involves both cognitive and emotional centers of the brain, and when effectively harnessed together, can help leaders provide truthful, caring, and helpful information while at the same time remain calm, steady, and decisive. Empathy is a crucial part of emotional intelligence that leaders need to employ in times of crisis.