Published on July 30, 2025 3:49 AM GMT
There’s a narrative I hear a lot: if I empathize more, put myself in other peoples’ shoes, try to feel what they’re feeling, see things from their perspective, etc, then I’ll feel kinder toward them. I’ll feel more sympathetic, be gentler, more compassionate or generous.
And man, that sure is not my experience with empathy.
I usually relate to other people via something like suspension of disbelief. Like, they’re a human, same as me, they presumably have thoughts and feelings and the like, but I compartmentalize that fact. I think of them kind of like cute cats. Because if I stop compartmentalizing, if I start to put myself in their shoes and imagine what they’re facing… then I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).
Like… remember the classic It’s Not About The Nail? You should watch the video, it’s two minutes and chef’s-kiss-level excellent. (Spoilers past here!) It opens with a woman talking about how she feels a relentless pressure in her head, she’s afraid it’s never going to stop, etc. Then the camera changes angle… and we see that there’s a nail stuck in her forehead. The guy next to her is like “Yeah… uh… y’know, there’s a nail in your head, I bet if we just got that sucker out of there…” to which the woman replies “It’s not about the nail! Stop trying to fix things when what I need is for you to just listen!”.
When I try to empathize with that woman, what I feel toward her is disgust. If I were in her shoes, I would immediately jump to getting rid of the damn nail, it wouldn’t even occur to me to not fix it. Sure, there have been times (though admittedly rare) when I want someone else to be sympathetic and supportive, but when I am not even trying to fix something myself I certainly do not expect sympathy from others. I can lean into the suspension of disbelief; if I were next to her, I could role-play as a supportive friend or partner. But put myself in her shoes? If I were in her shoes, behaving the way she behaves, I would feel disgust toward myself. She is not just inept in handling her problems, she lacks even the desire to fix that ineptitude, even when her problems are clearly imposing costs on both herself and those around her.
Another example: back in college, I had a long group project. And I liked my teammates, they were fun to hang out with while working on the project. Sure, I was the one doing most of the heavy lifting - not just the core technical parts, but also the writing, because both my relevant technical skills and my writing skills were in a whole different league from the rest of the team. But that was fine, I didn’t really think of them as people-who-were-supposed-to-be-helpful. As long as that suspension of disbelief was in place, no problem; it was an interesting project and I was happy to do it.
(I don’t think any of the people on that team are likely to see this, but if any of them do: this is the place to stop reading. Seriously, it will not do you net good to keep going.)
Then a conversation between myself and the professor overseeing the project dug a little too deep, and my disbelief temporarily ceased to be suspended. I had to look at the ineptitude of my teammates. What made it hurt wasn’t that they were stupid; this was a college where the median student got a perfect score on their math SATs, they were plenty smart. They just… hadn’t put in the effort. It was a machine learning project, and I was the only one on the team who’d studied any ML (years earlier; I knew well in advance that it would be a necessary skillset eventually, and already had experience with multiple other ML projects). Had I been in their shoes, I’d have at least gone through a set of ML lectures online before the semester started.
The disappointment came from seeing what they could have been, and seeing that they didn’t even try for it. They’d all come to one of the best colleges in the world, and then just followed the path of least resistance with minimal foresight for four years.
… then the conversation wrapped up, the suspension of disbelief went back into place, and I went back to enjoying their company.
I think a core factor here is something like ambition or growth mindset. When I have shortcomings, I view them as shortcomings to be fixed or at least mitigated, not as part of my identity or as a subject for sympathy. On the positive side, I have goals and am constantly growing to better achieve them. Tsuyoku naritai. I see people who lack that attitude, who don’t even really want to grow stronger, and when empathy causes the suspension of disbelief to drop… that’s when I feel disgust or disappointment in my so-called fellow humans. Because if I were in their shoes, I would feel disgust or disappointment in myself.
And then I put the suspension of disbelief back, and enjoy the cats’ company.
If you’re one of those people who wish people would empathize more, and believe this would lead to more kindness and compassion and gentleness and generosity… well, the main takeaway is for you. Consider that kindness and gentleness are not necessarily what everyone else feels, when they empathize.
And for those who share an experience more like mine… perhaps having pointed directly at the issue, you can now see a little better where others are coming from, when they ask for empathy. They don’t understand that empathy does not induce the things they imagine, for everyone. But empathy probably does induce kindness and gentleness and the like for them.
Lastly, for whatever smartass is about to suggest that my disgust/disappointment reaction is itself a problem to be fixed: only if it can happen in a way that makes me stronger, rather than weaker. I have no intention of lowering my standards for myself, unless that is somehow going to make me achieve more rather than less. Don’t go bullshitting me about how a kind and compassionate life of mediocrity is a “different kind of strength” or some such cope. But subject to that constraint, I would certainly like better ways of relating to people.
Discuss
