the vast chasm between sympathy and empathy

the last several posts about food have been built on a foundation of the shared experience. there is a power in an experience shared that doesn't exist in something that is experienced in solitude. when you are alone you cannot ask someone else if they just noticed this or that, if they felt that, or if they experienced something the same way as you.

i can hear some of the more astute readers protesting right now, that this is technically, if not categorically, incorrect. i was a philosophy minor after all in college. but i am not talking about the universal. i am pointing to the particular. i am making the subtle difference between sympathy and empathy stand out in the vast chasm which separates them.

i want you to think of empathy. those feelings and emotions, reactions and memories that are called up by having been practically speaking in the same place as another, not just similarly placed.

it is in these moments that we can probe the deeper things at work when we share with one another a beer brewed to perfection, a steak grilled without flaw, and vegetables seasoned from the earth, and yet, have something profoundly pass between us in our togetherness.

our small group experiences this at least once a year. we share the seder meal together. it is a traditionally jewish meal. it is derived from the jewish experience of passover that is passed down from one generation to the next in a narrative that shapes an entire culture. something special happens for us once a year when we share the tastes, the words, and feelings of the seder. we try to give voice to that afterward, but are not always successful at describing the ineffable.

i have found that as i have become more of an "adult" and "grown up," it becomes increasingly difficult to have these experiences. they must be scheduled. there are interruptions, excuses, reasons to not go and do. our culture seems to like it that way. i hope we can slowly change our culture, together.