Human, all too human—that describes the best of us.
Again we must talk about the foolishness of what I call 'feel good talk', the kind we console ourselves with and which makes human society sound rosier than it is. To that end, people talk about empathy, about the ability to put yourself in others' shoes as an important ingredient in social interaction and in winning love and respect.
What they seem to forget, however, is the fact that you are a person too, that you have your own perspective and sometimes your own (valid) reasons for doing things the way you do. What use is having empathy when, the moment there is disagreement, you might as well not have any in the eyes of others?
And disagreements are inevitable. As I've mentioned, you are your own person, and you view the world from your particular perspective. There is a necessary 'I' that fundamentally shapes how you interact with your surroundings. Given the uniqueness of each individual, there is bound to be instances where points of view clash.
So what happens then? Very often, we'd find that even with a lot of empathy we can't avoid conflict. It is often not enough, in personal matters, that others know that you respect their points of view. They want you to agree with them wholeheartedly. Otherwise, you are a bad person, or at least one lacking in empathy.
We see, therefore, that many people don't understand empathy. They understand it only from the point of view of themselves.
Ah, so it turns out that the problem is recursive. We are trapped in this unending loop of "me, myself and I", even when it comes to what is supposed to be about understanding others.
We are so hopeless we can hardly believe it. Even the people closest to you may, after a period of separation, be so detached to your fate that you might not have been able to imagine it had you tried to before being separated.
And, again, this stems from the fact that each of us only sees the world from each of our own particular perspective. Moreover, there is only so much information that we can process and consciously act on at any point of time. Once we are removed from some kind of stimuli, we will often fail to pay attention to the associated things.
I think it takes a great mind to be able to rise above such failings, or even to be aware of them. Hence, for the most part in this life, Michel de Montaigne's saying comes to mind:
"O my friends, there is no friend."
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