Blog Post 1 - Empathy & History

Empathy and sympathy are two somewhat related concepts that can be easy to muddle together. However, there is a key difference between them that is important to understand, especially in a history classroom. While having sympathy is relating emotionally with another person who is struggling or suffering, having empathy is understanding another person's perspective in a certain situation on a strictly intellectual or logical level. It is sometimes necessary to put empathy before sympathy in many professions, especially a historian's. Though sympathy is a highly valued trait of an emotionally sound person, having empathy can lead to having pure, unbiased understanding, even when it is difficult.
For example, I can empathize with my mother, even when she is telling me to do something that frustrates me exponentially. I am a "neat-freak". I am a perfectionist, and I am nervous, choosy, and stubborn. All of the above apply. With all of these characteristics, it bothers me more than almost anything else when my messy, sometimes careless younger sister leaves her dirty towels on the floor and her open jars of peanut butter on the countertop. What is even more infuriating is that it is a household rule of my family that I cannot nag her about it. My mother is particularly stringent about how siblings should not give each other parental directives; that is entirely up to her and my dad. It is so frustrating when my sister does not clean up after herself, because I feel like they do not get on to her as much as they should. Nevertheless, like a historian, I can empathize. I have never had children, and I hate the rule, but using unbiased logic, I can understand why the rule is in place. My mother does not want one of her daughters to have any unnatural power over the other. She does not think it is my place when I nag, just like she does not think it is my sister's place to yell at me for other reasons. I do not support the rule in any way, as a bossy, stubborn teen, but I can understand it intellectually. I get why it's a rule.
Anyone studying the past must master empathy. There are plenty of instances where it might make a person uncomfortable to "walk a mile in the shoes" of some of the infamous characters in history. Understandably, it is less burdensome on the conscious and more uplifting to put oneself in the position of a hero. However, if someone does not understand the perspectives of all of the people who shaped the present, at least in a purely intellectual way, they cannot truly understand history. They are leaving out the "why" and "how" from their knowledge of the time.
Here is a photo of the kind of mess my sister makes on the daily. She stinks. Here is a photo that visually represents empathy to me.