Act on Empathy

If we see a friend going though tough experiences, most of us step up to help in some way. We act with empathy, since we're prompted to do more than if we merely feel sorry. It's helping with the intention of enhancing that friend's well-being.

Empathy leads to altruism. "Altruism is a choice and something that we can actively cultivate when we observe others in need," according to psychologist, Lidewij Niezink.

Ten years after Columbine, educator David Levine is giving workshops to help students practice empathy as a way to overcome violence in schools. Levine says,

Empathy is a bundle of social skills. It really is starting out with the natural inclination that children have to reach out when someone's having some struggles and then as they get older, teaching them ways to use that natural feeling, to not just feel what someone else is feeling, but do some things to help them.

Acting on empathy can turn lives around...

Change didn't come easy for Quentin Marcus Moore. He wrestled and fought it for years.

"I'd start thinking, like, I wanted a better life, because I had just had my first child," he says. "So I wanted a better life for him, instead of me just going through life gang-banging, shooting people. But it was, like, going through a dark smoke: OK, I'm leaving the gang, but I'm going through cliques and crews in order to get to a place where I can work and be able to have a job and see how it was in the working world.Empathy can turn lives around...

Quentin's path eventually took him to Homeboy Industries, where he works as a case manager. And now as a case manager he describes himself as a "light through the darkness to find out what people's needs are - transportation, education, spiritual guidance - and then we place them in programs or at agencies where those needs can be met." A lot of the change that took place for Quentin came about because he now helps others and "every day he sees homies changing from being hardcore bangers to more mature young adults."

Similarly, expelled from school at just 14, Marvin Osemwegie spent his days wandering the streets of Peckham, South London, getting in with the wrong crowd. An organization, From Boyhood to Manhood, made a difference in Marvin's life. He explains it...

"It helped me with my self development, with my temper, and I learned how to control myself.

It meant I was able to go out there and have an effect like I was supposed to, rather than going out there and being a nuisance wherever I went."

After two years in the programme, Mr Osemwegie went to college, where he gained five GCSE's and then three A-Levels. He plans to help other youth turn themselves around in the same way. Mr Osemwegie is one of a group of former FBTM students now forming their own business, Streets 2 Success, which will mentor young boys in the area and help them fulfill their ambitions in life.

Interestingly, there may be a basis in neurobiology for wisdom's most universal traits, which researchers, Jeste and Meeks found to include such "attributes as empathy, compassion or altruism, emotional stability, self-understanding, and pro-social attitudes, including a tolerance for others' values."

Empathy activates the brain's pre-frontal cortex, when a person ponders a situation calling for altruism. And, moral decision-making is a combination of rational (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in sustaining attention and working memory), along with emotional/social (medial pre-frontal cortex. Since the human brain has great plasticity, we can grow more new neuron dendrite connections each time you or I act on empathy. Just think we grow more wise as we do!

What fruits of empathy in action left an impression on you?