A few days ago i visited my favorite pot shop for the first time in a couple months. The dude there was like, “Ayy you’re back!” This felt nice until i tried to say something about being memorable and he responded with, “No,you could be somebody I just met in the grocery store once and I would remember you. I’m an empath so that’s just me; I love people.”

Bruh.

Not that i am any sort of gatekeeper but i believe that a textbook empathetic moment would not have included discounting my hopeful “i like being memorable” by negating it. i teed up a nice little compliment there and this guy just barreled on through. Whoops!

How do you do empathy? Do we all do it? i have long wondered whether a lot of folks are actually projecting. Sympathizing?

Weed bro aside, here’s how i’ve witnessed the general role of “empathy” in the current zeitgeist: first, a person decides that they know what another is feeling. This is often followed by preempting the other’s response to that feeling. Generally this all comes from a place of genuine care and concern.

But wow, is it rude in practice! The “empath” here makes a lot of assumptions at once, the worst of which being that one can know better than another about the latter’s own needs. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be sad.” But like, didn’t you want to know, despite whatever emotional response you’d have? This kind of empathy removes a human’s autonomy, disallows their freedom.

An empathetic response, if i’m reading the definition correctly, is one that corresponds with the needs of the person with whom one is empathizing. It is not for the empath to do what they’d prefer done in this situation, but to understand that subject of concern has their own needs.

Whenever i deliberately empathize with others, i try to feel it through. i reach gently, with understanding, to very lightly grasp at what it is that might serve them in this moment. That’s the hard part: i will never know better than they what they might need, and i have to trust them to ask for whatever that is. Maybe i go as far as to make my supportive presence known; i leave a door open. Empathy is theoretical, at best. We truly have no idea what anyone else is going through.

A theory: if we are to hope that we can be as caring as an empath might be, we must indulge in the truth of a human’s existence being solely her own. What i want to hear or feel at any given moment is different from the next person’s needs, as theirs are from the next, and so on. Therefore the most genuine act of empathy is to believe in someone’s ability to respond for herself. To allow a person access to truth and offer support as they handle it their own way.

Then there’s that guy, who just got the definition wrong and felt strongly the need to really lean in: “I treat everybody like an old friend! I’m just an empath that way.” And maybe he is! Who am i to say?