Table of Contents
By John Eric Baugher, PhD
It’s a natural human response to do whatever we can to help relieve the suffering of another. But as those who are dying show us, the experience of compassion comes not only through our doing but through our willingness to relate as a person, beyond a prescribed role or call of duty. We enter a relation of compassion through empathizing with the unique experience of the other and allowing ourselves to be touched by her humanity. Without empathy, there can be no care, only charity, service, or, at worst, pity.
When we feel pity for another, we separate ourselves in self-protection. Pity is what happens when our concern for another is colored with fear, whereas compassion naturally arises when the concerns of our heart are softened by empathy. When we engage another with empathy, there is a willingness to put ourselves in her shoes, to feel what she is feeling from her perspective. But how can we empathize with one who is dying when we have not been there ourselves? How can we put ourselves in the shoes of those suffering from dementia, cancer, or any other affliction of the body and mind if we have not been personally touched by such experiences?
The Importance of Empathy
An important aspect of empathy is that it can’t be forced. As CM Davis writes, empathy is “indirectly given to us…. When empathy occurs, we find ourselves experiencing it, rather than directly causing it to happen.” Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the medical field is how the standard training of professional caregivers, which focuses on diagnosing and treating diseases, can undermine rather than nourish the empathetic willingness of caregivers. For this reason, some suggest that in training doctors, there is no need to teach empathy, but instead only to preserve the innate human capacity to imagine the suffering of another.
Empathy is not a discrete skill, such as how to take vital signs or how to dress a wound, but rather a moral capacity intrinsic to what makes us human. Although empathy cannot be directly taught, our empathetic imagination, a creative and fundamentally playful sensibility, can be fed and given space to flourish. Caring at the bedside of those who are dying is one context for cultivating our innate potential for empathy.
Through such practices as becoming curious about the experiences of others, deeply listening, and offering ourselves without pretense, each of us can expand our awareness of the humanity, individuality, and worldview of others, even those we may consider strangers or enemies. There is a process of extending compassion through an underappreciated quality of empathy—its rootedness in play.
We treat empathy with too much seriousness and not enough reverence. To get a sense of what I mean by this, we need only look at discussions on how to nourish empathy in children and then get curious about why we seem to believe adults are so different. It is through play that children become social, and by social, I mean empathetic. Through role-playing, children practice imagining the experience of another. Free play feeds a child’s natural sense of discovery and wonder about the world.
Similarly, encountering all that is with a reverential attitude of wonder captures the essence of contemplative caregiving, which is as much about affirming the possibility of meaning and joy as it is about relieving suffering. “Caring with a Playful Spirit,” examines play as a fundamental drive for transcendence and meaning, that we are always more than the suffering we may experience in any given moment. Just imagine if we were to approach parenting solely as a process of relieving suffering.
Our children would become quite neurotic and distrustful of our efforts to care. And as any child knows, an adult who is willing to play with complete freedom and imagination is an adult who cares. Are we courageous enough to let go of our own serious agenda as end-of-life caregivers and experience the joy of being fully alive whether the one in our care may live another ten minutes or another ten years?
Offering a Spiritual Friendship
“Offering Spiritual Friendship,” reflects on empathy as an encounter of equality. In hospice circles, you will often hear folks talk about helping another die “with dignity.” Typically, dying with dignity implies that one is able to die as much as possible on one’s own terms, and that one has the autonomy to make one’s own medical choices and other decisions regarding one’s care. While respect for autonomy is crucial to compassionate care, so too is equality.
Suffering creates an asymmetry in the relationship between the giver and recipient of care, and redressing this imbalance of power is central to compassionate care. Dignity in our care emerges, above all, from our willingness to engage the other from a place of mutual vulnerability, recognizing that it is only but a span of time that determines whether we are the one beside the dying bed or the one in it. In offering spiritual friendship, we recognize that we each are the guardians of the other’s soul, giving and receiving tenderness in an unending chain of human empathy.
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—From Contemplative Caregiving by John Eric Baugher © 2019. Excerpt reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, Colorado. www.shambhala.com
John Eric Baugher, PhD, has been a contemplative educator, social science researcher, and end-of-life caregiver for more than two decades. He is the co-editor of Leading with Spirit, Presence, and Authenticity and Creative Social Change: Leadership for a Healthy World. He consults and offers workshops internationally on spiritual care, grief and transformation, and contemplative learning. Find out more at johnericbaugher.com.
