Everyone thinks their own viewpoint is the right one.

One thing you always need to keep in mind is that people experience life differently. Their thought processes, perceptions and ideologies differ from yours, even if you believe they do not. People show affection differently, and similarly, people deal with pain and stress differently. Just because someone doesn’t react or respond the way you think they should, does not always mean each of you are on different pages.

We are conditioned to believe everyone takes the same logical path to reach a conclusion. Everyone loves the way we love and, thus; hates the way we hate. So when people surprise us by reacting in a way unique to their own personality, we experience conflict. We experience misunderstanding. A failure to adequately express what we really feel arises, and we may feel upset that something we say or do may not be taken the way we intend. It can be overwhelming.

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It allows us to view the world from another person’s eyes and recognize the emotions of another.

Empathy is, in a word, bullshit.

But only bullshit to an extent. We can attempt to empathize with another, but we will never truly comprehend or share the feelings of others because we can never get that deep into someone’s head. The only way we can hope to get close is through communication, but that is assuming someone listens or expresses themselves in a manner which is conducive to learning where the other is coming from. It’s an endless circle that requires a higher level of understanding in order to surpass. We can never fully understand what motivates an individual to react, and that is both the beauty and the fault of the world.

“What we know is a drop. What we don’t know is an ocean.”  -Sir Isaac Newton