Importance Of Learning Empathy

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Attending college is such a fortuitous and eye-opening an opportunity I have, that it is almost impossible to start and describe the enlightening nature of this experience. However, there are notions I’ve learnt that stand out to me more than any. Throughout my time here in Virginia Commonwealth University, I learnt how to be compassionate, how to grow, and how to use what I have to make a difference. Learning empathy has been a major part of my higher education experience: how it would look, feel, the shape it comes in and why it is important. It sounds fundamental the knowledge, one you should possess earlier in life, perhaps. Raised to believe that having empathy is a vague concept of not acting unkindly to those around you, I was self-absorbed…show more content…
As I study in a space of diverse experiences, and work at a newspaper of diverse opinions, I learn the many aspects of life through friends and peers’, including the less glamorous ones. I know that as long as the unfair system remains, those I care about will be hurt, and by extension, those who are like me, whom I don’t know yet but has come to love anyway, will be hurt too. Learning empathy, for me, is a process of researching about systematic oppression, marginalization, social phenomenons and their effects on these people I so value; it is acknowledging that people around you move differently in the world, having been through events that you cannot fathom, and perhaps never will. Empathy is not about not treating those around you unkindly, but to always treat them kindly. Furthermore, having compassion is also…show more content…
As I understand what it means to be kind, I realize I have been malicious and violent to my peers for several years of middle school, without intending to. Addressing the fact that I have been a bully in my earlier years, I publicly acknowledge this and apologize, not without knowing that neither the apology nor my guilt, nor my intention at the time, could not alter the consequences. Hence, I start to speak out against abusive and unhealthy relationships, criticizing “casual violence”, holding perpetrators such as myself accountable, and donating to anti-bullying campaigns. There are more jobs I must do, and some I should not have done for they were hypocritical and unethical. Not unlike the Japanese kintsugi ceramics, I plan to “fill the cracks with gold”, learning from my past mistakes to make sure the same error to not happen

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