Think right now of someone who’s behaved badly around you. Maybe it was an ornery cashier at the grocery store. Maybe it was a driver who cut you off. Maybe it was your spouse or colleague who said something offensive. Maybe it was a patient or client who acted rudely or even aggressively.
What all went into their bad behavior? What led up to it? Do you know? Are you fully aware?
I mean, you’re probably aware of some of it—especially if you’re close to them. But real empathy requires us to be aware of the limits of our awareness, and to be humbly curious as we seek to fill the gaps that can be filled.
Here’s the thing: Every person, however good or bad their behavior, has been formed by a history of anguished and joyful moments that have brought them to the present time and place. This history is either totally or mostly opaque to us, and often, it is largely opaque to the person as well. I’ve come to believe there’s something profoundly special, even sacred, about this opaqueness.
Simone Weil is famous for her writings on the unknowability of God. But she also talked a lot about the unknowability of other people:
“Justice. To be continually ready to admit that another person is something other than what we read when they are there (or when we think about them)…perhaps something altogether different.”*
We “read” others as best we can, but our interpretations are often woefully wrong. Our knowledge of other people—the stories that have formed them—is always partial, and sometimes it’s totally mistaken.
Weil believed compassion requires a curious and open inward attitude, wherein we wait to be surprised by the other person, militantly curbing our natural eagerness to prejudge. This kind of inward posture immediately humanizes and dignifies the other person. They are no longer an object to whom we do things, or from whom we get things, or about whom we determine things. Rather, they are a whole being – someone about whom we can wonder, and with whom we can partner in the human journey.
What can Weil’s philosophy offer us as leaders? I believe there is an invitation here for a certain quality and depth of empathic attention. It’s more than asking good questions. It’s more than putting down your phone. It’s more than eye contact and head nods. All that helps, of course. But when we cultivate genuine reverence for the mystery and sacredness contained in the faces and stories of other people, we dignify them. We understand them anew. And we open new avenues for their healing and wholeness – and perhaps ours, too.
